COMPARATIVE  PHILOLOGY 


•lifornia 
ional 


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THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 


GIFT  OF 


Professor  William  Popper 

(  \ 


EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 


EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES 


COMPARATIVE  PHILOLOGY,  PSYCHOLOGY, 

AND 

OLD  TESTAMENT  HISTORY. 


H.  OLDENBERG 

J.  JASTROW 

C.  H.  CORNILL 


CHICAGO : 

THE  OPEN  COURT  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 
169  La  Salle  Street 
1890. 


GIFT 


PREFATORY. 


THIS  little  book,  Epitomes  of  Three  Sciences,  gives  an  account  of 
the  recent  work  done  in  three  different  fields  of  modern  knowl- 
edge ;  viz.,  Comparative  Philology,  Experimental  Psychology,  and 
Old  Testament  History.  These  three  sciences  have  an  almost  di- 
rect bearing  upon  the  religious  views  of  our  time,  in  spite  of 
their  difference  of  subject  and  the  divergence  of  their  authors' 
standpoints.* 

This  preface  is  intended  to  explain  in  a  few  words  the  relation 
in  which  Comparative  Philology,  Experimental  Psychology,  and 
Biblical  History  stand  to  one  another. 

Philology  treats  of  language ;  and  it  is  language  that  has 
created  man  and  human  society.  It  is  speech  that  distinguishes 
the  soul  of  man  from  the  souls  of  brute  creation.  We  shall  never 
understand  the  mystery  of  man's  dignity,  his  superiority  and 
dominion  over  the  rest  of  the  animal  world  upon  earth,  until  we 
have  acquired  an  insight  into  the  growth  of  the  human  soul  as 
mirrored  in  the  evolution  of  human  speech.  Language  is  not,  as 
has  been  supposed  in  former  times,  a  supernatural  phenomenon  ; 
it  is  of  natural  growth  ;  and  nothing  elucidates  this  truth  more 
than  Comparative  Philology,  which  demonstrates  that  where  at 
first  sight  the  whims  of  fanciful  invention  or  wilful  caprice  seemed 
to  reign,  in  reality  definite  laws  obtain,  shaping  the  development 
of  our  speech  in  all  its  innumerable  phases  and  changes. 

The  same  holds  good  of  Psychology.  The  human  mind  is  of 
natural  growth,  and  the  various  caprices  of  the  soul  that  at  first 

*It  need  scarcely  be  added  that  every  one  of  the  three  authors  is  an 
authority  in  his  specialty,  and  that  none  of  these  essays  was  written  with  any 
other  purpose  in  view  than  that  of  summing  up  the  present  state  of  things  in 
their  three  several  departments. 

2007872 


6         EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

sight  appear  to  contradict  all  rule  and  method,  and  stand  forth  as 
seeming  exceptions  to  the  general  order  of  nature,  can  after  all  be 
classified,  demonstrated,  and  reproduced  by  experiment.  This  it 
is  that  modern  Psychology  has  attempted  to  do,  and  the  attempts 
to  a  great  extent  have  been  successful. 

Who  can  doubt  that  the  results  arrived  at  are  of  the  greatest 
importance  for  the  future  development  of  religion  ?  The  problem, 
What  is  the  human  soul  ?  must  be  fearlessly  faced  by  Theology  ; 
it  cannot  be  blinked.  The  progress  of  science  puts  new  problems 
to  the  defenders  of  religion,  and  our  moral  teachers  cannot  pass 
them  by  in  silence.  They  cannot  ignore  them. 

We  have  the  firm  confidence  that  the  kernel  of  all  religion, 
which  is  the  moral  truth  that  it  contains,  will  remain  unshaken 
through  every  new  discovery  and  through  every  broadening  of  our 
scientific  horizon.  The  religious  teacher,  that  is  to  say  the  moral 
instructor  of  mankind,  be  he  a  Christian  clergyman  or  a  Rabbi,  or 
the  leader  of  an  ethical  society,  need  not  fear  for  the  great  treasures 
that  are  entrusted  to  his  care.  The  moral  truths  will,  we  are  fully 
convinced,  never  suffer  from  the  critical  and  most  radical  investi- 
gations of  science.  This  the  third  essay  teaches,  which  is  a 
resume  of  the  critical  investigations  of  the  Old  Testament  and  the 
stories  of  the  Old  Testament. 

The  author  of  the  third  essay  is  an  orthodox  Christian  believer. 
This'  fact  must  be  mentioned,  chiefly  to  prevent  the  possible 
misconception  that  Professor  Cornill's  standpoint  is  the  same  as 
that  of  The  Open  Court.  But  it  has  another  and  greater  signifi- 
cance. It  proves  that  the  criticism  of  the  Old  Testament  is  not 
conducted  in  rashness  or  in  a  spirit  of  hostility,  but  with  scientific 
sincerity.  The  historical  records  of  the  Old  Testament  are 
searched  with  the  same  love  and  at  the  same  time  impartial  scru- 
tiny that  any  philological  scholar  ever  bestowed  upon  Homer  or 
Hesiod.  Professor  Cornill  applies  the  principles  of  scientific  re- 
search to  the  Bible,  and  he  finds  that  the  Old  Testament  loses 
none  of  its  value  in  ceasing  to  be  an  absolutely  reliable  and  lit- 


PREFA  TOR  Y.  7 

erally  inspired  revelation  from  God.  The  Old  Testament,  as  he 
takes  it,  is  imperfect ;  because  it  had  to  find  and  did  find  its  fulfil- 
ment in  the  New  Testament.  He  declares  that  no  conflict  is  pos- 
sible between  belief  and  knowledge  ;  because  believing  and  know- 
ing are  different. 

We  go  one  step  farther  than  Professor  Cornill,  and  we  appre- 
hend that  the  Theology  of  the  future  will  have  to  follow  us  in  our 
path.  We  look  upon  the  New  Testament  in  exactly  the  same 
light  that  Professor  Cornill  regards  the  Old  Testament.  The 
Biblical  books  do  not  lose  one  iota  of  their  value  because  the 
view  that  they  are  literally  inspired  has,  from  the  standpoint  of 
modern  scientific  inquiry,  become  untenable.  On  the  contrary, 
by  understanding  their  historical  growth  we  shall  appreciate  the 
better  their  grandeur  and  importance,  without  being  offended  at 
the  imperfections  that  naturally  attach  to  them. 

Many  are  the  conflicts  between  belief  and  science,  if  belief 
means  imperfect  knowledge  :  belief  always  has  to  give  way  to, 
and  must  attempt  to  develop  into,  scientific  knowledge.  Yet  there 
can  never  be  a  conflict  between  faith  and  science,  if  faith  means 
man's  fidelity  to,  his  confidence  in,  his  love  for,  the  moral  ideal. 
Every  progress  of  science  gives  us  new  knowledge,  and  will  ac- 
cordingly alter  some  of  our  beliefs  ;  but  it  will  never  alter  our 
moral  aspirations — or,  if  it  alters  them,  the  change  will  be  for  the 
better  ;  it  will  purify  them,  it  will  make  them  nobler  and  more 
humane. 

There  are  Jewish  Rabbis  who,  though  they  have  no  New  Tes- 
tament which  they  look  upon  as  a  fulfilment  of  the  Old,  accept 
the  results  of  modern  critical  research  as  regards  their  own  sacred 
scriptures  ;  and  yet  their  religion  is  not  destroyed  in  this  way. 
The  kernel  of  religion  consists  in  its  moral  truths  ;  and  the  moral 
truths  remain  the  same  in  the  Biblical  books,  nay,  are  better  ap- 
preciated if  scientific  criticism  has  cleared  them  from  the  briars 
and  brambles  of  errors.  No  scriptural  authority  ought  to  be  ex- 
empt from  criticism.  Let  us,  therefore,  not  hesitate  to  acknowl- 


8         EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

edge  the  principle  of  scientific  research  for  the  New  Testament 
just  as  much  as  has  been  done  for  the  Old  Testament.  Says  Pro- 
fessor Cornill :  "  To  that  which  has  been  acquired  through  strict 
and  methodical  scientific  research,  we  are  bound  to  bow  uncon- 
ditionally." And  this  is  universally  true,  not  only  in  all  scriptural 
investigations,  but  also  in  the  researches  of  the  natural  sciences, 
and  especially  in  the  science  of  soul-life. 

Thus,  modern  Psychology  throws  a  new  light  upon  the  prob- 
lems of  the  soul.  Long  cherished  errors  are  dispelled  and  a 
scientific  insight  is  gained  into  the  nature  of  the  human  mind. 
The  situation  is  as  thoroughly  altered  as  our  conception  of  the 
universe  was  in  the  times  of  Copernicus,  when  the  geocentric 
standpoint  had  to  be  abandoned. 

Modern  psychology  will  influence  the  religious  development 
of  humanity  in  no  less  a  degree  than  modern  astronomy  has  done. 
At  first  sight  the  new  truths  seem  appalling,  and  it  appears  diffi- 
cult to  renounce  the  egocentric  standpoint.  However,  a  closer  ac- 
quaintance with  the  modern  solutions  of  the  problems  of  soul-life 
shows,  that,  instead  of  destroying  religion,  they  place  it  upon  a 
firmer  foundation  than  it  ever  before  possessed. 

This  little  volume,  Epitomes  of  Three  Sciences,  is  not  intended 
as  a  solution  of  the  religious  problem.  It  is  a  contribution  only, 
to  help  the  student  in  the  gathering  of  material  that  will  prove 
useful  in  the  attempt  to  work  out  a  solution. 

There  is  a  new  Religion  dawning  upon  mankind  in  which 
belief  will  become  unnecessary  because  faith  will  have  taken  the 
place  of  belief.  The  old  religions  are  in  a  state  of  transition  ; 
their  dogmas  are  now  recognized  as  unbelievable  monstrosities 
irreconcilable  with  science.  A  superficial  observer  might  declare 
that  science  will  destroy  all  religion.  Yet  it  is  not  so.  Science  is 
hostile  to  religion  and  to  the  antiquated  dogmas  of  religion  only 
because  it  is  about  to  create  a  new  religion,  and  the  new  religion 
will  not  come  to  destroy,  but  to  fulfil,  the  old  religions. 

EDITOR  OF  THE  OPEN  COURT. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

THE  STUDY  OF  SANSKRIT.     By  PROFESSOR  H.  OLDEN- 
BERG. 

Introduction 13 

Sanskrit    Research 15 

From  Jones  to  Lassen 16 

The  Discovery  of  the  Veda  ;    Vedic  Research  ;   Vedic 

Poetry 28 

The  Interpretation  of  the  Veda 40 

The  History  of  the  Vedic  Epoch 49 

ASPECTS  OF  MODERN  PSYCHOLOGY.     By  PROFESSOR 
JOSEPH  JASTROW. 

Introductory 59 

Psychology  in  Germany. 72 

Psychology  in  France  and  Italy 82 

Psychology  in  Great  Britain  and  the  United  States 92 

RISE  OF   THE    PEOPLE  OF    ISRAEL.     By  PROFESSOR 

C.    H.    CORNILL. 

Introduction 103 

The  Traditions  of  the  People  of  Israel 107 

The  Migrations  of  the  Tribes  of  Israel 112 

The  Conquest  of  Palestine  and  the  Founding  of    the 

Kingdom  of  Israel 125 


THE  STUDY  OF  SANSKRIT. 


INTRODUCTION. 


THE  work  of  investigation  in  the  language  and  literature  of 
Ancient  India,  the  development  of  which  the  following  pages  at- 
tempt to  portray,  has  also  in  America  long  since  acquired  the 
rights  of  citizenship.  A  band  of  distinguished  American  scholars 
stands  in  the  first  rank  among  the  laborers  in  this  common 
work  of  investigation.  We  have  sought  in  the  following  presenta- 
tion to  estimate  the  services  of  Bohtlingk  and  Roth,  who  pro- 
duced the  great  Sanskrit  Dictionary  :  we  must  add  that  by  the  side 
of  this  most  excellent  lexical  production  there  stands  a  Grammar  of 
the  Sanskrit  language,  of  modest  compass  compared  with  the  mon- 
umental dimensions  of  the  work  first-mentioned,  yet  of  not  less 
fundamental  importance. 

The  scholar  to  whom  we  are  indebted  for  this  Grammar,  is 
the  head  of  the  American  Sankritists — William  D.  Whitney. 
Whitney  it  was  that  first  attempted  to  get  at  the  meaning  of,  and  to 
present  the  data  of  Sanskrit  grammar,  the  exuberant  inflectional 
systems  of  the  Indian  Noun  and  the  Indian  Verb  as  they  actually  ex- 
ist in  the  literature  of  the  language,  and  not  as  they  appear,  full  of 
distortions  mingled  with  phantasies  of  every  description,  in  the  the- 
ories of  the  native  Indian  grammarians.  The  investigator  of  the 
often  so  enigmatic  texts  of  the  Veda,  the  comparative  philologist 
that  seeks  to  explain  the  obscure  formations  of  the  Greek  and  Teu- 
tonic tongues  by  the  aid  of  the  light  that  Sanskrit  sheds  upon  them, 
finds  himself  obliged,  at  every  step,  to  have  recourse  to  the  gram- 
matical data  that  the  industry  of  Whitney  has  gathered  and  that 
Whitney's  acumen  has  placed  in  their  proper  light. 


14       EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

The  German  author  of  the  following  essay  believes  that  he 
can  preface  the  same  with  no  better  word  of  introduction  than  by 
the  expression  of  his  admiration  and  gratitude  for  the  aid  and  ad- 
vancement that  he  has  constantly  received  from  the  labors  of  his 
American  friends  and  colleagues.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  inti- 
mate and  fruitful  cooperation  that  has  ever  obtained  between  the 
Sanskrit  scholars  of  Germany  and  America  shall  also,  in  the  future, 
continue  and  endure;  to  the  manifold  advantage  of  the  investiga- 
tion of  these  venerable  monuments  of  primitive  Indian  civilization. 

H.  OLDENBERG. 
KIEL,  October  20,   1889. 


THE  STUDY  OF  SANSKRIT. 


THE  study  of  Sanskrit,  the  science  of  the  antiquities 
of  India,  is  about  a  century  old.  It  was  in  the  year 
1784  that  a  number  of  men  acting  in  Calcutta  as  judges 
or  administrative  officers  of  the  East  India  Company, 
formed  themselves  into  a  scientific  society,  the  Asiatic 
Society.  We  may  say  that  the  founding  of  the  Asiatic 
Society  was  contemporaneous  with  the  rise  of  a  new 
branch  of  historical  inquiry,  the  possibility  of  which 
preceding  generations  had  barely  or  never  thought  of. 

Englishmen  began  the  work;  soon  it  was  taken 
up  by  other  nations;  and  in  the  course  of  time,  in  a 
much  greater  degree  than  is  the  case  with  the  study 
of  hieroglyphic  and  cuneiform  inscriptions,  it  has  be- 
come ever  more  distinctly  a  branch  of  inquir)'  pecu- 
liarly German. 

The  little  band  of  workers  who  are  busy  in  the 
workshops  of  this  department  of  science,  have  not 
been  accustomed  to  have  the  eyes  of  other  men  turned 
upon  their  doings — their  successes  and  failures.  But, 
in  spite,  nay,  rather  in  consequence  of  this,  it  is  right 
that  an  attempt  should  be  made  to  invite  even  the 
most  disinterested  to  an  inspection  of  these  places  of 
industry,  and  to  point  out  and  show  to  them,  piece  by 
piece,  the  work,  or  at  least  part  of  the  work,  that  has 
been  done  in  them. 

There  still  lies  formless  in  the  workshops  of  this 
department  of  inquiry  many  a  block  of  unhewn  stone, 


1 6       EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

which  perhaps  will  forever  resist  the  shaping  hand. 
But  still,  under  the  active  chisel,  many  a  form  has  be- 
come visible,  from  whose  features  distant  times  and 
the  past  life  of  a  strange  people  look  down  upon  us — 
a  people  who  are  related  to  us,  yet  whose  ways  are 
so  far  removed  in  every  respect  from  our  ways. 

We  shall  first  cast  a  glance  at  the  beginning  of  In- 
dian research  toward  the  close  of  the  last  century.  We 
shall  trace  the  way  in  which  the  new  science,  after  the 
first  hasty  survey  of  its  territory,  at  once  concentrated 
its  efforts  to  a  more  profound  investigation  of  its  sub- 
ject and  advanced  to  an  incomparably  broader  plane  of 
study.  We  shall,  above  all,  follow  the  difficult  course 
pursued  in  the  study  of  the  Veda,  the  most  important 
of  the  literary  remains  of  ancient  India,  a  production 
with  which  even  the  works  of  the  oldest  Buddhism 
are  not  to  be  compared  in  point  of  historical  impor- 
tance. Of  the  problems  that  this  science  encountered, 
of  its  aspirations,  and  of  the  successes  that  attended 
its  efforts  in  solving  difficult  questions,  we  may  venture 
to  give  a  description,  or  at  least  an  outline. 


THE  first  effective  impulse  to  the  study  of  Sanskrit 
and  Sanskrit  literature  was  given  by  Sir  William  Jones, 
who,  in  1783,  embarked  for  India  to  assume  the  post 
of  Judge  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  Judicature  at  Fort 
William.  The  honor  of  having  inaugurated  a  new 
era  of  philological  inquiry,  was  heightened  by  the 
lustre  and  charm  of  personal  character  which  this 
gifted  and  versatile  man  exerted  upon  his  contempo- 
raries. In  prose  and  in  verse  Jones  is  extolled  by  his 


THE  STUDY  OF  SANSKRIT.  17 

friends  of  both  sexes  as  the  phoenix  of  his  time,  ';  the 
most  enlightened  of  the  sons  of  men  " — encomiums 
many  of  which  a  calmer  and  more  distant  observer 
would  be  inclined  to  modify.  The  correspondence 
and  other  memoranda  of  Jones,  which  exist  in  great 
abundance,*  furnish  the  reader  of  to-day  rather  the 
picture  of  an  indefatigable  and  euphuistic  dilettante, 
than  that  of  an  earnest  investigator, — apart  from  the 
fact  that  he  was  alike  greatly  deficient  in  discernment 
and  zeal. 

As  a  young  man  we  find  Jones  engaged  in  reading 
and  reproducing  in  English  verse,  the  works  of  Per- 
sian and  Arabian  poets;  occasionally  also  with  glimpses 
into  Chinese  literature.  Then,  again,  a  project  of  his 
own,  an  heroic  epic — a  sort  of  new  ^Eneid,  for  which, 
and  certainly  with  ingenuity  enough,  the  Phoenician 
mythological  deities  were  impressed  into  service — 
was  to  celebrate  the  perfections  of  the  English  con- 
stitution. On  the  journey  to  India  this  man  of  thirty- 
seven  sketched  a  catalogue  of  the  works,  which,  God 
granting  him  life,  he  hoped  to  write  after  celebrated 
models.  These  models  were  carefully  designated  op- 
posite the  separate  projects  of  the  outline.  By  the 
side  of  this  heroic  epic  (after  the  pattern  of  Homer), 
we  find  a  history  of  the  war  with  America  (after  the 
patterns  of  Thucydides  and  Polybius),  a  philosophical 
and  historical  dialogue  (after  the  pattern  of  Plato), 
and  other  plans  of  similar  works. 

With  this  feeling  of  omnipotent  self-assurance, 
wholly  untroubled  with  doubts,  Jones  was  placed  in 
India  before  the  task  of  opening  a  way  into  the  gigan- 

*  Edited  by  his  biographer,  Lord  Teignmouth,  and  often  given  with  more 
completeness  than  appears  advisable  considering  the  panegyrical  charac- 
ter of  the  biography. 


IS       EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

tic  masses  of  an  unknown  literature,  of  a  strange  and 
beautiful  poetry.  He  was  as  well  qualified  for  the  pur- 
pose (perhaps  in  a  higher  degree  so)  as  many  a  more 
earnest  and  gifted  scholar  might  have  been. 

The  situation  of  affairs  which  he  found  in  India 
forced  it  upon  the  European  rulers  of  the  land  as  a 
duty,  to  acquaint  themselves  with  the  Sanskrit  lan- 
guage and  its  literature.  The  rapid  extension  and  at 
the  same  time  the  redoubled  activity  of  the  English 
rule  made  it  inconceivable  that  the  existence  of  the 
old  indigenous  civilization  and  literature  of  the  na- 
tion could  long  remain  ignored  or  merely  superfici- 
ally recognized. 

Preeminently  did  this  necessity  assert  itself  in  the 
administration  of  justice,  where  the  policy  of  the  East 
India  Company  imperatively  demanded  that  the  na- 
tives should  be  suffered  to  retain  as  many  of  their 
laws  and  customs  as  it  were  possible  to  concede  them. 
Already,  in  an  act  of  parliament  passed  in  1772  in  re- 
gard to  the  affairs  of  the  company,  a  measure  had 
been  incorporated,  at  the  suggestion  of  Warren  Hast- 
ings, providing  that  Mohammedan  and  Indian  lawyers 
should  take  part  in  court  proceedings,  in  order  to  give 
effect  to  native  laws  and  assist  in  the  formulation  of 
judgments.  The  dependence  that  thus  resulted,  of 
European  judges  upon  the  reliability  or  unreliability 
of  Indian  pandits,  must  have  been  trying  indeed,  to  the 
conscientious  jurist;  for  the  assertions  of  Indian  coun- 
cillors as  to  the  principles  of  the  Law  of  inheritance, 
contract,  etc.,  contained  in  the  native  books,  were  sub- 
ject to  no  control. 

Warren  Hastings,  in  order  to  obviate  the  difficulty, 
had  a  digest  made  by  several  Brahmanical  juris- 
consults from  the  old  Sanskrit  law  books,  and  this  was 


THE  STUD  Y  OF  SANSKRIT.  \  y 

translated  into  English.  The  undertaking  had  but  little 
success,  principally  because  no  European  was  to  be 
found  who  could  translate  directly  from  the  Sanskrit. 
A  translation  had  first  to  be  made  from  Sanskrit  into 
Persian  and  from  Persian  again  into  English.*  The 
necessity  therefore  of  gaining  direct  access  to  the 
Sanskrit  language  was  unquestionable.  The  under- 
taking was  not  an  easy  one,  though  it  was  still  quite 
different  from  such  apparently  impossible  feats  of 
philological  ingenuity  as  the  deciphering  of  hiero- 
glyphic and  cuneiform  inscriptions. 

The  knowledge  and  likewise  the  use  of  Sanskrit  in 
India  had  lived  on  in  unbroken  tradition. f  There  were 
countless  pandits  who  knew  Sanskrit  as  well  as  the 
scholars  of  the  Middle  Ages  knew  Latin,  and  who 
were  eminently  competent  to  teach  the  language.  It 
was  easy  to  overcome  the  opposing  Brahmanical  pre- 
judices. To  become  master,  however,  of  the  obstacles 
which  emanated  from  the  indescribably  intricate  and 
perverted  grammatical  system|  of  the  Hindus,  offered 
greater  difficulties,  which  could  be  only  overcome  by 
patience  and  enthusiasm. 

Just  at  the  first  moments  of  this  trouble  came  the 
arrival  of  Sir  William  Jones  in  India.  Immediately 
he  was  the  central  figure.  From  him  came  the  found- 
ing of  the  Asiatic  Society;  from  him,  the  impulse  to  a 
new  revision  of  the  Hindu  law  of  contract  and  inheri- 


*  Published  in  1776,  under  the  title,  "A  Code  of  Gentoo  Law." 
tThis  is  the  case  at  the  present  time.     Compare,  upon  this  point,  Max 
Midler's  "  India  what  can  it  teach  us  "  p.  78  et  seq. 

*The  original  complaint  of  Paulinus  a  S.  Bartholomaeo,  a  missionary  in 
India  about  the  time  of  Jones,  is  well  known. — "The  devil,  with  a  phenomenal 
display  of  ingenuity  and  craft,  had  incited  the  Brahmanical  sages  to  invent  a 
language  so  rich  and  so  complex,  that  its  mysteries  might  be  concealed  not 
only  from  the  people  at  large,  but  even  from  the  very  scholars  who  were 
conversant  with  it." 


20       EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

tance,  this  time  undertaken  on  a  surer  basis.  He  as- 
sembled about  him  competent  Brahmans  versed  in 
Sanskrit.  In  the  year  1790  he  wrote:  "Every  day  I 
talk  Sanskrit  with  the  pandits;  I  hope  before  I  leave 
India  to  understand  it  as  I  understand  Latin." 

It  was  not  now  a  question  of  research,  but  of  ac- 
quisition, of  study;  that  clear  and  satisfactory  results 
might  rapidly  be  acquired,  and  that  a  proper  selection 
of  noteworthy  productions  of  the  Hindu  mind  might 
be  made  and  presented  before  the  eyes  of  all.  Jones 
translated  the  most  delightful  of  all  Hindu  dramas, 
the  story  of  the  touching  fate  of  the  ascetic  maiden, 
Sakuntala,  who  in  the  sylvan  quiet  of  her  retreat  was 
seen  and  loved  by  the  kingly  hunter  Dushjanta — a 
work,  full  of  the  most  delicate  sentiment,  exhaling 
fragrance  like  the  summer  splendor  of  Indian  Nature, 
and  sung  in  the  delicate  rhythms  of  Kalidasa,  of  in- 
spired eloquence.* 

Still  more  important  than  the  version  of  Sakuntala 
was  the  publication  of  a  second  great  work,  which 
Jones  translated,  the  Laws  of  Mami.  It  seemed  as 
though  a  Lycurgus  of  a  primitive  oriental  era  had 
come  to  light;  for  this  wonderful  picture  of  a  strange 
people's  life  was  ascribed  to  the  remotest  antiquity — a 
description  of  Brahmanical  rule  by  the  grace  of  Brah- 
ma, magnified  and  distorted  by  priestly  pride,  in  which 
the  people  are  nothing,  the  prince  is  little,  the  priest  is 
everything.  In  the  face  of  such  an  abruptly  accumu- 
lated mass  of  unexpected  revelations,  respecting  an  an- 


*  It  was  formerly  thought,  for  reasons  that  have  not  withstood  the  assault 
of  criticism,  that  Kalidasa  flourished  in  the  first  century  before  Christ;  it  was 
the  custom  to  compare  him  to  the  Roman  poets  of  the  Augustan  era,  whose 
contemporaries  he  in  that  event  would  about  have  been.  In  point  of  fact  he 
must  be  assigned  to  an  era  several  centuries  later, — about  the  sixth  century 
after  Christ. 


THE  STUDY  OF  SANSKRIT.  21 

cient  civilization  hitherto  removed  from  all  knowledge, 
how  could  one  resist  an  attempt  to  give  to  that  civili- 
zation and  its  language  a  place  among  known  civili- 
zations and  languages?  Wherever  the  eye  turned 
weighty  and  pregnant  suggestions  offered  themselves, 
and  with  them  the  temptation  to  let  fancy  stray  in 
aimless  sallies.  What  is  more,  Jones  was  in  no  wise 
the  man  to  resist  such  a  temptation.  The  vocabulary 
and  the  grammatical  structure  of  Sanskrit  convinced 
him  that  the  ancient  language  of  the  Hindus  was  re- 
lated to  those  of  the  Greeks,  Romans,  and  Germans, 
that  it  must  have  been  derived  with  them  from  a  com- 
mon mother  tongue.*  But  side  by  side  with  the  con- 
ception of  this  incomparably  suggestive  idea,  innumer- 
able fanciful  theories  abound  in  the  works  of  Jones, 
concerning  the  relationship  of  the  primitive  peoples, 
where  everything  was  found  to  be  in  some  way  related 
to  everything  else.  Now  the  Hindu  tongue  was  iden- 
tified with  that  of  the  Old  Testament;  now  Hindu  civ- 
ilization was  brought  into  connection  with  South 
American  civilization.  Buddha  was  said  to  be  Woden; 
and  the  pyramids  and  sphinxes  of  Egypt  were  claimed 
to  show  the  style  of  the  same  workmen  who  built  the 
Hindu  cave-temples  and  chiseled  the  ancient  images 
of  Buddha. 

Fortunately  for  the  new  study  of  Sanskrit,  the  con- 
tinuation of  the  work  begun  b)'  Jones  fell  to  one  of  the 
most  cautious  and  comprehensive  observer  of  facts 
that  have  ever  devoted  their  attention  and  talent  to 

*The  identity  of  Hindu  words  with  those  of  Latin,  Greek,  and  other  lan- 
guages had  been  noticed  by  several  before  Jones,  and  likewise  the  correct  ex- 
planation of  this  phenomenon,  namely  the  kinship  of  the  Hindu  nation  with 
the  Latins  and  Greeks,  had  been  declared  by  Father  Pons  as  early  as  1740. 
For  fuller  account,  see  Benfey,  "History  of  the  Science  of  Language,"  (Ge- 
schichte  der  Sprachwissenschaft)  pp.  222,  333-341. 


22        EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

the  study  of  oriental  literatures.  This  was  Henry 
Thomas  Colebrooke  (born  1765;  went  to  India  1782), 
the  most  active  in  the  active  band  of  Indian  adminis- 
trative officers.  He  officiated  now  as  an  officer  of  the 
government,  now  again  as  a  justice,  then  as  diplo- 
matist— a  man  well  versed  in  Indian  agriculture  and 
Indian  trade.  One  can  scarcely  regard  without  as- 
tonishment the  multitude  of  disclosures  which,  during 
the  long  period  he  devoted  to  Sanskrit,  he  was  able 
to  make  from  his  incomparable  collection  of  manu- 
scripts. These  to-day  are  among  the  principle  treas- 
ures of  the  India  Office  Library.  From  the  province 
of  Indian  poetry,  Colebrooke,  who  well  knew  the  lim- 
its of  his  own  power,  kept  aloof.  But  in  the  literature 
of  law,  grammar,  philosophy,  and  astronomy,  he  had 
a  wide  reading,  which  in  scope  may  never  again  be 
reached.  He  it  was  who  made  the  first  comprehen- 
sive disclosure  in  regard  to  the  literature  of  the  Veda. 

Colebrooke's  investigations  are  poor  in  hypotheses; 
we  may  say  he  withheld  too  much  from  seeking  to  com- 
prehend the  historical  genesis  of  the  subjects  with 
which  he  dealt.  But  he  established  the  actual  foun- 
dation of  broad  provinces  of  Hindu  research ;  filled 
with  wonder  himself  at  the  ever  widening  vistas  of 
that  literature  which  were  now  revealed  to  him,  and 
awakening  our  just  wonder  by  the  sure  and  patient 
toil  with  which  he  sought  to  penetrate  into  those  dis- 
tant parts. 

While  Colebrooke  was  at  the  height  of  his  activity, 
interest  in  Hindu  inquiry  began  to  be  awakened  in 
a  country  which  has  done  more  than  any  other  land 
to  make  of  Hindu  research  a  firm  and  well-established 
science — in  Germany. 

For  the  discoveries  of  Jones  and  Colebrooke  there 


THE  STUDY  OF  SANSKRIT.  23 

could  have  been  no  more  receptive  soil  than  the  Ger- 
many of  that  time,  full  of  spirited  interest  in  the  old 
national  poetry  of  all  nations  and  occupied  with  the 
stirring  movements  rife  in  its  own  philosophy  and  lit- 
erature. Apparently,  indeed,  the  latter  were  closely  al- 
lied to  the  spirit  of  the  distant  Hindu  literature;  for 
here  too  oriental  romanticism  and  poetical  thought 
sought  no  less  boldly  than  the  absolute  philosophy  of 
Germany,  to  penetrate  to  the  primal  and  formless 
source  of  all  forms.  From  the  beginning,  poets  stood 
in  the  foremost  ranks  among  the  Sanskritists  of  Ger- 
many ;  there  were  the  two  Schlegels  and  Friedrich 
Riickert,  and  beside  these,  careful  and  unassuming, 
the  great  founder  of  grammatical  science,  Franz  Bopp. 
In  the  year  1808  appeared  Friedrich  SchlegeFs 
work,  Ueber  die  Sprache  und  Weisheit  der  Inder  (The 
Language  and  Learning  of  the  Hindus).  From  what 
was  known  to  him  of  Hindu  poetry  and  speculation, 
and  according  to  his  own  ideas  of  the  laws  and  aims 
of  the  human  mind,  Schlegel,  with  warm  and  fanciful 
eloquence,  drew  a  picture  of  India  as  a  land  of  exalted 
primitive  wisdcm.  Hindu  religion  and  Hindu  poetry 
he  described  as  replete  with  exuberant  power  and 
light,  in  comparison  with  which  even  the  noblest  phi- 
losophy and  poetry  of  Greece  was  but  a  feeble  spark 
The  time  from  which  the  masterpieces  of  the  Hindus 
dated,  appeared  to  him  a  distant,  gigantic,  primeval 
age  of  spiritual  culture.  There  was  the  home  of  those 
earnest  teachings,  full  of  gloomy  tragedy,  of  the  soul's 
migration,  and  of  the  dark  fate  which  ordains  for  all 
beings  their  ways  and  their  end: 

Obedient  to  this  purpose  set,  they  wander;  from  God  to  plants; 

Here,  in  the  abhorred  world  of  existence,  that  ever  moves  to  destruction. 

While   Schlegel    gave   to   the  world    this   fanciful 


24       EPITOMES  OF   THREE  SCIENCES. 

picture  of  Hindu  wisdom,  highly  effective  from  its 
prophetic  perspectives,  but  still  wanting  in  sober 
truth,  Bopp  applied  himself,  more  unassumingly,  but 
with  an  incomparably  deeper  grasp  and  patient 
sagacity,  to  investigating  the  grammatical  structure 
of  Sanskrit;  and,  on  the  recognized  fact  of  the  rela- 
tionship of  this  language  with  the  Persian  and  the 
principal  European  tongues,  to  establishing  the  science 
of  comparative  grammar.  In  the  year  1816  appeared 
his  Conjugationssystem  der  Sanskritsprache  in  Ver- 
gleichung  mil  jenem  der  griechischen,  lateinischen,  per- 
sischen,  und  germanischen  Sprache  (Conjugational  Sys- 
tem of  the  Sanskrit  Language  in  Comparison  with  that 
of  the  Greek,  Latin,  Persian,  and  Teutonic  Lan- 
guages). 

This  was  no  longer  merely  an  attempt  to  find  iso- 
lated similarities  in  the  sounds  of  the  words  of  related 
languages,  but  an  attempt  to  trace  back  not  only 
uniformities  but  also  differences  to  their  fixed  laws; 
and  thus  in  the  life  and  growth  of  these  languages,  as 
they  sprang  from  a  common  root  and  evolved  them- 
selves into  a  rich  complexity,  to  discover  more  and 
more  the  traces  of  a  necessity  dominated  by  definite 
principles. 

We  can  here  only  briefly  touch  upon  the  investi- 
gations made  during  the  last  seventy  years,  for  which 
Bopp  laid  the  foundation  by  the  publication  of  his 
work.  Rarely  have  such  astonishing  results  been 
achieved  by  science  as  here.  Elucidative  of  the  early 
history  of  the  languages  of  Homer  and  the  old  Italian 
monuments  before  they  acquired  the  form  in  which 
we  now  find  them  written,  the  most  unexpected  wit- 
nesses were  brought  to  give  testimony;  namely,  the 
languages  of  the  Hindus,  the  Germans,  the  Slavs, 


THE  STUDY  OF  SANSKRIT.  25 

and  the  Celts.  Of  these  related  tongues,  the  one  sheds 
light  upon  the  obscure  features  of  the  others,  just  as 
natural  history  explains  the  stunted  organs  of  some 
animals  by  pointing  out  the  same  organs  in  their  orig- 
inal, perfect  form,  in  other  animals. 

The  picture  of  the  mother  tongue,  whose  filial  de- 
scendants are  the  languages  of  our  linguistic  family, 
was  no  longer  seen  in  merely  vague  or  doubtful  fea- 
tures. The  laws  under  whose  dominion  the  system  of 
sounds  and  forms  in  the  separate  derived  languages 
have  been  developed  from  the  mother  tongue,  are  be- 
ing ascertained  ever  more  fully  and  formulated  ever 
more  sharply. 

From  the  very  beginning  the  essential  instrument, 
yes,  the  very  foundation  of  this  investigation,  was  the 
Sanskrit  language.  In  the  beginning,  faith  in  the 
primitiveness  of  Sanskrit  in  comparison  with  the  rela- 
ted languages  was  too  strong.  During  the  last  few 
years,  however,  this  erroneous  conception  has  been 
fully  rectified;  and  this  in  itself  is  a  decided  step  in 
advance.  We  know  now  that  the  apparently  simpler 
and  clearer  state  of  Sanskrit  in  sounds  and  forms  is  in 
many  respects  less  primitive  than  the  complicated  re- 
lations of  other  languages,  e.  g.,  the  Greek;  and  that 
we  must  often  set  out  from  these  languages  rather 
than  from  the  Sanskrit,  in  order  to  make  possible  the 
explanation  of  Sanskrit  forms./  Thus  Sanskrit  now 
receives  back  the  light  which  it  has  furnished  for  the 
historical  understanding  of  the  European  languages.* 

*  It  may  be  permissible  here  to  illustrate  this  reversion  of  methods  in  a  sin- 
gle point  that  has  become  of  especially  great  importance  to  grammar. 
The  Greek  has  five  short  vowels,  a,  e,  a,  z,  u.  The  Sanskrit  has  i  and  «  corres- 
ponding to  i  and  «;  but  to  the  three  sounds,  a,  e,  o  corresponds  in  Sanskrit  only 
a  single  vowel  a.  Thus,  for  example,  the  Greek  apo  (English,  from)  reads  in 
Sanskrit  apa:  the  a  of  the  first  syllable,  and  the  o  of  the  second  syllable  of  the 


26        EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

I  must  not  attempt  to  follow  in  detail  the  course 
which  the  science  of  comparative  grammar,  apart 
from  its  connection  with  Hindu  research,  has  taken. 
While  the  two  branches  of  the  study  were  rapidly  ad- 
vanced by  Germans  particularly,  and  likewise  in  France 
by  the  sagacious  Bernouf,  new  material  kept  pouring 
in  from  India  no  less  rapidly.  In  two  countries  on 
the  outskirts  of  Indian  civilization,  in  the  Himalayan 
valleys  of  Nepal,  and  in  Ceylon,  the  sacred  literature 
of  the  Buddhists,  which  had  disappeared  in  India 
proper,  was  brought  to  light  in  two  collections,  one  in 
Sanskrit  and  one  in  the  popular  dialect  Pali.  The  in- 
genuity of  Prinseps  succeeded  in  deciphering  the 
oldest  Indian  written  characters  on  inscriptions  and 
coins.  In  Calcutta  was  undertaken  and  completed  in 
the  Thirties  the  publication  of  the  Mahabharata,  a  gi- 
gantic heroic  poem  of  almost  a  hundred  thousand 

Greek  word  is  thus  represented  in  Sanskrit  by  a.  Or,  to  use  another  example, 
the  Greek  menos  (English,  courage)  is  in  Sanskrit  manas;  Greek  epheron  (I 
carried) — abharam.  What  now  is  the  original,  /.  e..  what  existed  in  the  Indo- 
Germanic  mother  tongue  for  the  three  sounds  of  the  Greek  a,  e,  o,  or  the  single 
sound  of  the  Sanskrit  a?  When  scholars  began  to  study  comparative  philology 
upon  the  basis  of  the  Sanskrit  they  thought  the  a — and  this  was  a  conclusion 
apparently  supported  by  the  simplicity  of  the  language — to  be  alone  the  orig- 
inal sound;  and  were  led  to  believe  that  this  vowel  was  later  divided  on  Euro- 
pean soil  into  three  sounds,  a,  e,  o.  Investigations  of  the'  most  recent  time — 
and  for  these  we  are  to  thank  Amelung,  Burgman,  John  Schmidt,  and  others — 
have  shown  that  the  development  of  the  vowel  system  took  the  opposite  course. 
The  vowels  a,  e,  a  were  already  in  the  Indo  Germanic  mother  tongue;  and  in 
Sanskrit,  or  more  accurately,  before  the  time  of  Sanskrit,  in  the  language  which 
the  ancestors  of  the  Indians  and  Persians  spoke  when  both  formed  one  people, 
these  vowels  were  merged  into  a  single  vowel  Thus  the  e  of  esti  and  the  o  of 
apo  are  more  original  than  the  a  of  asti,  apa. 

Now,  we  find  in  Sanskrit  that  where  the  Greek  e  corresponds  to  the  San- 
skrit a,  certain  consonants  preceding  this  vowel,  as.  e.g.,  k,  are  affected  in  a 
different  way  by  the  latter,  than  in  instances  where  for  the  a  of  Sanskrit  the 
Greek  a  or  o  is  used.  From  the  linguistic  form  of  Sanskrit  alone,  which  in  the 
one  case  as  in  the  other  has  a,  it  would  not  be  intelligible  why  the  k  should 
each  time  meet  a  different  fate.  The  Greek,  in  that  it  has  preserved  the  orig- 
inal differences  of  the  vowels,  gives  the  key  to  an  understanding  of  the  peculiar 
transformations  which  have  taken  place  in  the  £-sound  in  large  and  important 
groups  of  Sanskrit  words. 


THE  STUDY  OF  SANSKRIT.  27 

couplets,  in  whose  vast  cantos  with  their  labyrinth  of 
episodes  and  sub-episodes  many  generations  of  poets 
have  brought  together  legends  of  the  heroes  and  days 
of  the  olden  time,  of  their  struggles  and  flagellations. 

The  sum  and  substance  of  all  this  newly-acquired 
knowledge  has  been  incorporated  in  the  great  work  of 
a  Norwegian,  who  became,  in  Germany,  a  German — in 
the  Indische  Alterthurnskunde  (Hindu  Antiquities)  of 
Christian  Lassen. 

Lassen  did  not  belong  to  the  great  pioneers  of 
science,  like  Bopp.  It  must  also  be  said  that  often 
that  sagacity  of  philological  thought  is  wanting  in  him, 
which  sheds  light  on  questions  even  where  it  affords 
no  definite  solution  of  them.  And,  indeed,  was  it  not 
a  herculean  undertaking,  a  work  like  that  of  the  Dana- 
ides,  to  explore  the  older  periods  of  the  Hindu  past 
when,  as  the  chief  sources  of  information,  one  was 
solely  limited  to  the  great  epic,  and  the  law  book  of 
Manu?  Even  a  surer  critical  power  than  Lassen  pos- 
sessed could  not  have  discovered  much  of  history  in 
the  nebulous  confusion  of  legends,  in  the  invented  se- 
ries of  kings  in  Mahabharata,  and  in  that  colorless  uni- 
formity which  the  style  of  the  Hindu  Virgils  spreads 
unchangeably  over  the  enormous  periods  of  time  oi 
which  they  assume  to  inform  us.  In  spite  of  this,  Las- 
sen's  Antiquities — the  work  of  tireless  diligence  and 
rare  learning — stands  as  a  landmark  in  the  history 
of  Hindu  investigations,  uniting  all  the  results  of  past 
time,  and  pointing  out  anew,  by  the  very  things  in 
which  it  is  lacking,  still  untried  undertakings. 

Just  at  this  time,  however,  when  the  first  volume 
of  Lassen's  work,  treating  of  the  earliest  periods,  ap- 
peared, came  the  beginning  of  a  movement  which  has 
severed  the  development  of  Hindu  "Studies  into  two 


28       EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

parts.  New  personalities  appeared  upon  the  scene 
and  pushed  to  the  front  a  new  series  of  problems,  for 
the  solution  of  which  an  apparently  inexhaustible,  and 
to  this  day,  in  a  certain  sense,  a  still  inexhaustible 
supply  of  freshly  acquired  material  was  offered.  This 
was  the  most  important  acquisition  that  has  ever  been 
added  to  our  knowledge  of  the  world's  literature 
through  any  one  branch  of  oriental  inquiry — the  ac- 
quisition of  the  Veda  for  science. 

ii. 

CONSIDERING  the  circumstances,  this  acquisition 
of  the  Veda  for  science  can  hardly  be  accounted  a 
discovery.  The  existence  and  position  in  Hindu  lit- 
erature of  this  great  work,  had  long  been  known.  At 
every  step  the  writings  that  had  previously  been 
brought  to  light,  pointed  to  the  Veda  as  the  source  from 
which  all  proceeded — even  more  strikingly  than  in  the 
literature  of  Greece,  we  are  led  back,  at  every  turn,  to 
the  poems  of  Homer.  Manuscripts  of  the  Vedic  texts, 
moreover,  were  to  be  found,  not  only  in  India;  they 
had  long  been  possessed  in  great  numbers  by  the 
libraries  of  Europe.  But  an  attempt  had  scarcely,  if 
at  all,  been  made  to  lay  hold  of  these  and  see  if  in  the 
unmeasurable  chaos  of  this  mass  of  writings  a  firm 
ground  for  science  could  not  be  acquired. 

The  Sanskrit  of  the  great  epic  poems,  or  of  Kalidasa, 
was  understood  well  enough  ;  but  of  the  dialect  in 
which  the  most  important  parts  of  the  Veda  were 
written,  no  more  was  known  than  one  familiar  with 
the  French  of  to-day  would  know  of  the  language  of 
the  Troubadours.  Without  going  deeply  into  the  study 
it  was  easy  to  discern  its  inherent  difficulties  from  the 
unwonted  singularity  of  the  text  and  its  strange  con- 


THE  STUDY  OF  SANSKRIT.  29 

tents,  which,  in  part  at  least,  were  extreme!}'  compli- 
cated, and  often  involved  in  a  maze  of  minor  details. 
Would  an  earnest  explorer  of  this  territory,  even  in 
case  he  succeeded,  be  rewarded  for  his  pains  ? 

It  was  a  band  of  young  German  scholars  who  bent 
their  energies  to  this  work.  Most  of  them  are  still 
working  in  our  midst — Max  Mtiller,  Roth,  and  Weber. 
Two  others,  whose  names  should  not  be  omitted  here, 
died  a  few  years  ago  ;  these  were  Adalbert  Kuhn  and 
Benfey.  There  was  no  need  of  undertaking  great  ex- 
peditions, such  as  were  those  that  set  out  for  the 
investigation  of  Egyptian  and  Babylonian  antiquity. 
Those  monuments  in  whose  colossal  and  strange  forms 
fragments  of  a  primeval  age  meet  the  eye,  were  want- 
ing in  India.  The  knowledge  which  was  to  be  ac- 
quired was  not  contained  in  inscriptions,  but  in 
manuscripts.*  Our  scholars  repaired  to  London  for  a 
greater  or  less  length  of  time,  and  the  work  was  be- 
gun among  the  store  of  manuscripts  possessed  by  the 
East  India  House. 

There  was  no  lack  of  confidence.  "  It  would  be  a 
disgrace,"  wrote  Roth,  "  to  the  criticism  and  the 
ingenuity  of  our  century  which  has  deciphered  the 
stone  inscriptions  of  the  Persian  kings  and  the  books 
of  Zoroaster,  if  it  did  not  succeed  in  reading  in  this 
enormous  literature  the  intellectual  history  of  the 
Hindu  nation." 

Much  that  Roth  expected  has  been  accomplished 
or  is  on  the  way  towards  accomplishment.  Of  much, 
that  was  hoped  for  at  that  time,  we  can  now  say  that 
it  was  unattainable,  and  understand  why.  What  has 

*  The  royal  library  at  Berlin  also  acquired  and  owns  a  rich  collection  of 
Sanskrit  manuscripts,  for  which  a  foundation  was  laid  by  the  purchase,  at  the 
command  of  Frederick  William  IV.,  of  the  Chambers  manuscripts. 


3o       EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

been  attained,  however,  has  given  to  the  picture,  which 
science  formed  of  Hindu  antiquity,  an  entirely  different 
aspect.  Unbounded  in  extent,  this  picture  formerly 
seemed  to  lose  itself  in  the  nebulous  depths  of  an  im- 
measurable past.  Now,  determinate  limits  have  been 
found,  and  the  remotest  initial  point  has  been  discov- 
ered for  verifiable  history.  Authentic  sources  were 
disclosed,  leading  to  the  earliest  age  of  Hindu  civiliza- 
tion, from  which,  and  regarding  which,  historical 
testimony  in  the  usual  sense  of  the  word  became  ac- 
cessible ;  and  instead  of  the  twilight,  peopled  with 
uncertain,  shadowy  giants,  in  which  the  epic  poems 
made  those  times  appear,  the  Veda  opened  to  us  a 
reality  which  we  may  hope  to  understand.  Or,  if  in 
many  instances,  instead  of  the  hoped  for  forms,  it  has 
afforded  the  eye  but  an  empty  space,  even  this  was  a 
step  in  advance.  For  then  it  was  at  least  shown  that 
the  knowledge  which  was  sought  was  not  to  be  had  ; 
and  that  which  had  been  given  as  such,  had  disclosed 
itself  as  an  imaginative  picture  born  of  the  caprice  of 
a  later  legend  maker. 

The  literature  of  epic  poetry,  apparently,  could  no 
longer  lay  claim  to  an  incalculable  antiquity  ;  it  sank 
back  into  a  sort  of  Middle  Ages,  behind  which  the  newly 
discovered,  real  antiquity  loomed  forth,  studding  the 
horizon  of  historical  knowledge  with  significant  forms. 
We  shall  now  see  how  the  task  of  understanding  the 
Veda  was  accomplished,  and  shall  describe  at  the  same 
time  what  it  was  that  had  thus  been  acquired.  We 
have  here  a  newly  disclosed  literature  of  venerable  an- 
tiquity, rich  in  marks  of  earnest  effort,  logically  cfevel- 
oped  in  sharply,  nay  rigidly,  characterized  forms  ;  we 
have  a  newly  discovered  piece  of  history,  forming  the 
historical — or  shall  we  say  unhistorical? — beginnings 


THE  STUDY  OF  SANSKRIT.  31 

of  a  people  related  to  us  by  race,  who  at  an  early  day 
set  out  in  paths  distinctly  removed  from  the  ways  of 
all  other  peoples,  and  created  their  own  strange  forms 
of  existence,  bearing  in  them  the  germs  of  the  mis- 
fortunes they  have  suffered. 

By  what  means  did  we  succeed  in  understanding 
the  Veda? 

Almost  all  the  more  important  parts  of  the  Vedic 
literature — for  the  Veda,  like  the  Bible,  is  not  a  sep- 
arate text,  but  a  literature  with  wide  ramifications — 
are  preserved  in  numerous,  and,  for  the  most  part, 
relatively  modern  manuscripts.  Only  rarely  are  they 
older  than  a  few  centuries;  since  in  the  destructive 
climate  of  India  it  could  not  be  otherwise.  The  texts, 
however,  of  these  later  manuscripts  descend  from  re- 
mote antiquity. 

Before  they  came  to  be  written  in  the  present 
manuscripts,  or  written  in  manuscript  -  form  at  all, 
they  encountered,  in  the  course  of  great  periods  of 
time,  many  and  manifold  misfortunes.  It  is  the  task 
of  the  philological  inquirer  to  ascertain  the  character 
of  these  events — to  determine  the  genetic  history  of 
the  texts.  It  may  be  said  that  these  texts  in  the 
shape  they  have  been  transmitted  to  us,  resemble 
paintings  by  old  masters,  which  bear  unmistakable 
traces  of  alternate  injuries  and  attempted  restorations 
by  competent  and-  incompetent  hands.  What  we 
want  to  know,  so  far  as  it  lies  in  our  power,  is  the 
form  and  general  character  in  which  they  originally 
existed. 

The  period  to  which  the  origin  of  the  old  Vedic 
poems  belongs,  we  cannot  assign  in  years,  nor  yet  in 
centuries.  But  we  know  that  these  poems  existed, 
when  there  was  not  a  city  in  India,  but  only  hamlets 


32       EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

and  castles ;  when  the  names  of  the  powerful  tribes 
which  at  a  later  time  assumed  the  first  rank  among 
the  nations  of  India  were  not  even  mentioned,  no  more 
so  than  in  the  German}-  which  Tacitus  described  were 
mentioned  the  names  of  Franks  and  Bavarians.  It 
was  the  period  of  migrations,  of  endless,  turbulent 
feuds  among  small  unsettled  tribes  with  their  nobles 
and  priests;  people  fought  for  pastures,  and  cows,  and 
arable  land.  It  was  the  period  of  conflict  between  the 
fair-skinned  immigrants,  who  called  themselves  Arya, 
and  the  natives,  the  "dark  people,"  the  "unbelievers 
that  propitate  not  the  Gods." 

As  yet  the  thought  and  belief  of  the  Hindus  did 
not  seek  the  divine  in  those  formless  depths  in  which 
later  ages  conceived  the  idea  of  the  eternal  and  hidden 
Brahma.  Wherever  in  nature  the  brightest  pictures 
met  the  eye  and  the  mightiest  tones  struck  the  ear, 
there  were  their  Gods — the  luminous  arch  of  heaven, 
the  red  hues  of  dawn,  the  thundering  storm-god  and 
his  followers,  the  winds.  The  Vedic  Aryans  had  not 
yet  reached  their  later  abode  on  the  two  powerful  sis- 
ter streams,  the  Ganges  and  the  Yumna;  the  Sindhu 
(Indus)  was  still  for  them  the  "  Mother  Stream,"  of 
which  one  of  the  oldest  poets  of  the  Rig  Veda  says  :  * 

"  From  earth  along  the  reach  of  Heaven  riseth  the  sound; 
Ceaseless  the  roar  of  her  waters,  the  bright  one. 

As  floods  of  thundering  rain,  poured  from  the  darkened  cloud-bosom, 
So  rushes  the  Sindu,  like  the  steer,  the  bellowing  one." 

The  poetry  of  the  Rig  Veda  dates  from  the  time  of 
those  wanderings  and  struggles  that  took  place  on 
the  Indus  and  its  tributary  streams.  Certain  fam- 
ilies exercised  the  functions  of  priestly  offices,  and 

*  Hundreds  of  Vedic  melodies  have  been  handed  down  to  us  in  a  form  the 
interpretation  of  which  can  be  subject  to  no  real  doubt.  As  it  appears,  they 
are  the  oldest  but  unfortunately  the  poorest  memorials  of  musical  antiquity. 


THE  STUDY  OF  SANSKRIT.  33 

possessed  the  acquisitions  of  an  artificially  connected 
speech  together  with  a  simple  form  of  chant  using  but 
few  tones.  These  families  created  Vedic  poetry,  and 
transmitted  the  art  to  their  posterity.  The  songs  of 
the  Rig  Veda,  which  are  almost  all  sacrificial  songs,  were 
not  really  what  we  call  popular  poetry.  We  do  not 
hear  in  them  the  language  that  pours  forth  from  the  soul 
of  a  nation,  as  it  communes  in  poetical  rhythm  with 
itself.  It  was  a  poetry  that  wanted  mainly  the  proper 
hearers — the  masses  of  the  people  who  spoke  through 
the  mouth  of  the  poet.  Their  hearers  were  God  Agni, 
God  Indra,  or  Goddess  Dawn  ;  and  the  poet  was  not 
he  whom  the  passionate  impulses  of  his  own  soul  or 
his  own  love  of  song  and  legend  impelled  to  sing,  but 
he  was  mainly  one  who  belonged  to  a  poet-family — 
one  of  the  families  of  men  who  in  the  course  of  time 
became  united  as  a  caste  and  erected  ever  more  insu- 
perable barriers  between  their  sacred  existence  and 
the  profane  reality  of  daily  life.  For  the  gods  such 
a  poet  only  "  could  frame  a  worthy  poem,  as  an  expe- 
rienced, skillful  wheelwright  makes  a  wagon," — a  poem 
which  would  be  rewarded  by  the  rich  princely  lords 
of  the  sacrifice,  with  steeds  and  kine,  with  golden  or- 
naments and  female  slaves  from  the  spoils  of  war. 
"Thy  blessing,"  says  a  Vedic  poet  to  a  God,* 

"  Rests  with  the  givers, 
With  the  victors,  the  many  valiant  heroes, 
Who  make  gifts  to  us  of  clothing,  kine,  and  horses; 
May  they  rejoice  in  the  splendor  and  plenty  of  divine  bounty. 

Let  all  things  waste  that  they  have  won 

Who,  without  rewarding,  would  profit  by  our  hymns  to  heaven. 

The  godless  ones,  that  boast  their  fortune, 

The  transgressors — cast  them  from  the  light  of  day." 

It  has  been   fatal  for  all  thought  and  poetry  in  In- 
dia, that  a  second  world,  filled  with  strangely  fantastic 

*Rig  Veda  V.  42,8-9. 


34       EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

shapes,  was  established  at  an  early  day  beside  the 
real  world.  This  was  the  place  of  sacrifice  with  its 
three  sacred  fires  and  the  schools  in  which  the  virtu- 
osos of  the  sacrificial  art  were  educated — a  sphere  of 
strangest  activity  and  the  playground  of  a  subtle, 
empty  mummery,  whose  enervating  power  over  the 
spirit  of  an  entire  nation  we  can  scarcely  comprehend 
in  its  full  extent.  The  poetry  of  the  Rig  Veda  shows 
us  this  process  of  disease  at  an  early  stage  ;  but  it  is 
there,  and  much  of  that  which  constitutes  the  essence 
of  the  Rig  Veda,  is  rooted  in  it. 

In  the  foreground  stands  the  sacrifice,  and  through- 
out, only  the  sacrifice.  "  By  sacrifice  the  Gods  made 
sacrifice  ;  these  regulations  were  the  first,"  it  is  said  in 
a  verse  which  is  thrice  repeated  in  the  Rig  Veda.  The 
praise  of  the  God  for  whom  the  sacrificial  offerings 
were  intended,  his  power,  his  victories,  and  the  prayers 
for  possessions  which  were  hoped  for  in  return  for  hu- 
man offerings — the  prosperity  of  flocks  and  posterity, 
long  life,  destruction  of  enemies,  the  hated  and  the 
godless — such  is  the  subject-matter  of  the  multitudi- 
nous repetitions  that  recur  throughout  the  hymns  of 
the  Rig  Veda.  Still,  among  these  verse-making  sacri- 
ficers  there  was  not  an  utter  absence  of  real  poets. 
And  thus  among  the  stereotyped  implorations  and 
songs  of  praise  we  find  here  and  there  a  great  and 
beautiful  picture — the  wonder  of  the  poet's  soul  at  the 
bright  marvels  of  nature  or  the  deep  expression  of  an 
earnest  inner  life.  A  poet  from  the  priestly  family  of 
the  Bharadvajas  sings  of  the  goddess  Ushas,  the 
dawn:* 

*The  Indian  word  Ushas  is  related  to  the  Greek  Eos,  the  Latin  Aurora. 


THE  STUDY  OF  SANSKRIT. 


"  We  see  thee,  thou  lovely  one  ,  far,  far,  thou  shinost. 
To  heaven's  heights  thy  brilliant  light-beams  dart. 
In  beauteous  splendor  shimmering,  unveilest  thou  thy  bosom, 
Radiant  with  heaven's  sheen,  celestial  queen  of  dawn  I 

"  The  red  bulls  draw  their  chariot, 
Where  in  thy  splendor  thou  o'erspread'st  the  heavens; 
Thou  drivest  away  night ;  as  a  hero,  a  bow-man, 
As  a  swift  charioteer  frighteneth  his  enemies. 

"  A  beautiful  path  has  been  made  for  thee  in  the  mountain. 
Thou  unconquerable  one,  thou  risest  from  out  the  waters. 
So  bring  thou  us  treasures  to  revive  us  on 
Our  further  course,  queenly  daughter  of  heaven."* 

Another  poet  sings  of  Parjanya,  the  rain  God:  f 

"  Like  the  driver  who  forward  whips  his  steeds, 
So  he  urges  onward  his  messengers,  the  clouds. 
From  afar  the  thunder-tone  of  the  lion  arises 
When  the  God  makes  rain  pour  from  the  clouds. 

"  Parjanya's  lightnings  dart ,  the  winds  blow; 
The  floods  pour  from  heaven  ;  up  spring  grass  and  plants. 
To  all  that  lives  and  moves  a  quickening  is  imparted, 
When  the  God  scatters  his  seeds  on  the  earth. 

"  At  his  command  the  earth  bows  deeply  down ; 
At  his  command  hoofed  creatures  come  to  life  ; 
At  his  command  bloom  forth  the  bright  flowers  : 
May  Parjanya  grant  us  strong  defence  I 

"  A  flood  of  rain  hast  thou  sent ;  now  cease; 
Thou  didst  make  penetrable  the  desert  wastes. 
For  us  thou  hast  caused  plants  to  grow  for  food, 
And  the  prayer  of  men  thou  hast  fulfilled." 

But  we  must  turn  from  the  description  of  Vedic 
poetry  to  examine  the  fortune  that  this  production 
encountered  on  its  way  from  distant  antiquity  to  the 
present  time,  from  the  sacrificial  places  on  the  Indus 
to  the  workshops  of  the  English  and  German  philolo- 
gists. Here  a  conspicious  fact  is  to  be  dwelt  upon, 

*  Rig  Veda  VI.  64.    The  hymn  following  is  V.  83. 

t  This  God  also  reappears  among  the  kindred  peoples  of  Europe,  as  Fior- 
gynn  in  the  northern  mythology,  and  among  the  Lithuanians  and  Prussians  as 
the  God  Perkunas,  of  whom  an  old  chronicle  says  :  "  Perkunas  was  the  third 
idol;  and  him  the  people  besought  for  storms,  so  that  during  his  time  they  had 
rain  and  fair  weather  and  suffered  not  from  the  thunder  and  the  lightning." 


36       EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

which  belongs  to  the  strangest  phenomena  of  Indian 
history,  so  rich  in  strange  events.  The  hymns  of  the 
Rig  Veda,  as  well  as  the  hymns  of  the  other  Vedas, 
have  been  composed,  collected,  and  transmitted  to 
succeeding  ages.  There  has  been  incorporated  in 
them  a  very  large  sacerdotal  prose  literature,  devel- 
oped throughout  the  older  and  later  divisions,  and 
treating  of  the  art  and  symbolism  of  sacrifice.  There 
have  also  arisen  heretical  sects,  like  the  Buddhists, 
who  denied  the  authority  of  the  Veda,  and  instead  of 
its  teachings  reverenced  as  a  sacred  text  the  code  of 
ordinances  proclaimed  by  Buddha.  And  all  this  has 
taken  place  -without  the  art  of  writing. 

In  the  Vedic  ages  writing  was  not  known.  At  the 
time  when  Buddhism  arose  it  was  indeed  known — the 
Indians  probably  learned  to  write  from  Semites — but 
it  was  used  only  for  inditing  short  communic.ations  in 
practical  life,  not  for  writing  books.  We  have  very 
sure  and  characteristic  information  as  to  the  role  which 
the  art  of  writing  played,  or  rather  did  not  play,  in  the 
church  life  of  the  Buddhists  at  a  comparatively  late 
age,  say  about  400  B.  C.  The  sacred  text  of  this  sect 
affords  a  picture,  executed  even  in  its  minutest  features, 
of  life  in  the  houses  and  parks  which  the  brethren  in- 
habited. We  can  see  the  Buddhist  monks  pursue  their 
daily  life  from  morning  to  night ;  we  can  see  them  in 
their  wanderings  and  during  their  rest,  in  solitude  and 
in  intercourse  with  other  monks,  or  laymen  ;  we  know 
the  equipment  of  the  places  occupied  by  them,  their 
furniture,  and  the  contents  of  their  store-rooms.  But 
nowhere  do  we  hear  that  they  read  their  sacred  texts 
or  copied  them  ;  nowhere,  that  in  the  dwellings  of  the 
monks  such  things  as  writing  utensils  or  manuscripts 
were  found. 


THE  STUDY  OF  SANSKRIT.  37 

The  memory  of  the  spiritual  brethren,  "rich  in 
hearing," — what  we  to-day  call  a  well-read  man  was 
then  called  one  rich  in  hearing, — took  the  place  of  a 
cloister  library ;  and  if  the  knowledge  of  some  indis- 
pensable text, — as,  e.  g.,  the  formula  of  confession 
which  had  to  be  recited  at  the  full  and  new  moon  in 
the  assembly  of  the  brethren, — was  in  danger  of 
being  lost  among  a  body  of  priests,  they  acted  on  the 
dictum  laid  down  in  an  old  Buddhistic  ordinance:  "By 
these  monks  a  monk  shall  immediately  be  sent  to  a 
neighboring  parish.  He  must  be  thus  instructed  :  '  Go, 
Brother,  and  when  thou  hast  learned  by  heart  the 
formula  of  confession,  the  complete  one  or  the  abre- 
viated  one,  come  back  to  us.' " 

It  must  be  admitted  that  under  such  circumstances 
all  the  conditions  for  the  existence  of  books,  and  the 
relations  between  books  and  reader — if  it  be  allowed  me 
for  the  sake  of  brevity  to  use  these  expressions — must 
have  been  of  a  very  different  nature  than  in  an  age  of 
writing  or  one  of  printing.  A  book  could  then  exist 
only  on  condition  that  a  body  of  men  existed  among 
whom  it  was  taught  and  learned  and  transmitted  from 
generation  to  generation.  A  book  could  be  known  only 
at  the  price  of  learning  it  by  heart,  or  of  having  some 
one  at  hand  who  had  thus  learned  it.  Texts  of  a  con- 
tent which  only  claimed  a  passing  notice,  could  not  as 
a  rule  exist.  This  was  fatal  for  historical  writing  and 
generally  speaking  for  all  profane  literature.  Above 
all,  the  existing  texts  were  subjected  to  the  disfigure- 
ments that  errors  of  memory,  carelessness,  or  attempts 
at  improvement  on  the  part  of  the  transmitters  must 
have  imported  into  them. 

Under  conditions  such  as  have  been  described 
above,  the  poetry  of  the  Rig  Veda  has  been  handed 


EPITOME 


down  fr:r-.  r  en  ^ra  ::•:--  :.:  renerarioc 
centuries.  Sepirare  pcer.:^  -v^rt  ;r:u^i"  :n-.z  ±.e  <iaL- 
lection  in  die  course  ct  oral  :;:"  ;:lj.^:ti  and  ^ins- 
mission.  The  .:.::  Lection  "vi.=  re  -corrected  zn  repeated 
occasions  and  was  crcu^h.;  D:  Drearer  completeness;. 
again  only  by  oral  ^ampila^'Z-c  and  rransmissiorL  It 
is  concei-vabie  enough,  thai  thus  die  original  scracture 
yes,  even  the  existence  itself  of  special  hymns  was 
often  injured,  effaced.,  or  destroyed.  Remodeling; 
stroyed  their  form.  The  lines  of  drrrsiQ-a 
hymns  standing  aide  by  side  wouM  often  be 
and  numbers  of  rhem  would  be  mergeti  nmtoaaB 
parent  unity.  Modern^  and  easily 


drove  out  the  obsolete  phrases  anxi  tfttfr  ^WK^rnf  imni 
forms  —  often  the  most  valuable  remains  for  Ac  i 


trgator,  whom,  thev  help  to  eaplaim  ftfag  ftJ****^'  of 
language,  just  as  the  scientist  cfetiftmrTS  fasam  fossil  ire- 
mains  the  history  of  organic  life. 

Especially  fafcaT  was  it  for  nine  old  and  five  fintan  of 
the  Yedxc  hymns-  tfnaf  tfia^r  fta.\ne  beat  sferettdbDal  mgnm. 
the  Pracrtist -: 

and  more  strongly  thani  im  aimy  uiluu 
was  interest  samdpicasBHCttaikeffliiti 
dissecfti^  Iimpngii1.    Clasdhp  < 
sounds  of  Ttpcg eh  aad  tflh 
they    enxployvd  exreptoooal  jungiuiuutp  and 
natroii  m  ciMiifsiiaitiag  a  sfateai  firaaw 
it  became  known 
turv   round  anrple    reason,   to 
mar 

stmJents  of  Vedic  fittexataie  has  been  budeBed  Eftac 
a  curse  witfe  tfeat  gennamEBefiy  Mmafr^  twaai^  €^^^1^- 
flne  joy — -vimJi  at  IIUBUH.S  seoBsto  bonier  OBI  naarHif  fiiniirir 
."- : : : — ::  : ::-::.:. . "-  in  '-  ::::  i_  :_:_n;;  .n:: 


i   ot   the 


THE  STL'DY  OF  SAXSKRIT. 

garment,  of  building  up  labyrinths  of  f.r.e  points,  in 
whose  involved  courses  the  skilled  and  cu::::;::_  ^fa- 
dent  ostentatiously  thought  himself  able  to  rind  his 
way.  Thus,  in  this  grammatical  science,  understand:::.: 
and  misunderstanding  of  the  real  truth  are  mingled 
in  inexplicable  confusion.  That  under  the 
such  linguistic  theorists  the  precious  wealt 
old  Vedic  hymns  has  not  remained  inviolate,  is  easily 
comprehended.  In  some  cases,  isolated  details  of 
the  traditions  of  prior  epochs  were  caught  and  clung 
to  with  felicitous  acumen  ;  in  others,  no  hesitation 
was  had  in  wiping  out  of  existence  entire  domains  of 
old  and  genuine  phenomena  to  suit  half-correct  theo- 
ries, so  that  the  most  patient  ingenuity  of  modern 
science  will  only  be  able  to  restore  in  part  what  has 
been  lost. 

Finally,  however,  the  caprice  under  which  the 
hymns  of  the  old  singers  must  have  suffered,  had  its 
end.  The  more  people  accustomed  themselves  to  see  in 
these  poems  not  merely  beautiful  and  efficacious 
prayers  but  a  sacred  revelation  of  the  divine,  the  higher 
did  their  transmitted  form — even  when  this  is,  or  seems 
to  be,  of  necessity,  so  irregular — rise  in  the  respect  of 
theologians,  and  the  more  careful  must  they  have  been 
to  describe  and  preserve  this  form  with  all  its  dissim- 
ilarities. 

We  possess  a  remarkable  work — it  is  composed  in 
verse  like  many  Hindu  treatises  and  hand-books — in 
which  a  grammarian,  Caunaka,  who  must  probably  be 
placed  about  the  time  400  B.  C.,  has  given  a  deep  and 
unusually  well-planned  survey  of  the  vocal  peculiar- 
ities of  the  Rig  Veda  text  The  study  of  Caunaka's 
work  affords  us  the  proof  that  from  that  time  on  the 
Vedic  hymns,  protected  by  the  united  care  of  gram- 


40       EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

matical  and  religious  respect  for  letters,  have  suffered 
no  further  appreciable  corruptions.  The  most  im- 
portant manuscripts  of  the  Rig  Veda  which  we  know, 
may  be  two  thousand  years  later  than  this  hand-book 
of  Caunaka's,  but  they  bear  all  tests  in  a  remarkable 
way  if  we  compare  them  with  it. 

The  Rig  Veda,  indeed,  which  that  Hindu  scholar 
found,  was  not  unlike  a  ruin.  And  it  was  hardly  pos- 
sible by  the  help  of  Hindu  scholarship  to  transmit  it 
to  posterity  in  a  better  condition  than  it  was  received 
But  still  the  conscientious  diligence  of  the  Hindu  lin- 
guists and  divines  accomplished  something  :  for  the 
last  two  thousand  years  it  has  preserved  these  vener- 
able fragments  from  the  dangers  of  further  decay. 
They  lie  there,  untouched,  just  as  they  were  in  the 
days  of  Caunaka.  And  the  investigation  of  our  day, 
which  has  already  succeeded  in  bringing  forth  from 
many  a  field  of  ruins  the  living  features  of  a  by-gone 
existence,  is  at  work  among  them,  now  with  the  bold 
grasp  of  confident  divination,  now  in  the  quiet  uni- 
formity of  slowly  advancing  deliberation,  to  deduce 
whatever  it  may  of  the  real  forms  of  those  old  priestly 
poems. 


in. 


WE  may  say,  that  the  greatest  undertakings  planned 
and  the  most  important  results  achieved  in  the  field 
of  Sanskrit  research,  are  linked  with  the  names  of  Ger- 
man investigators.  If  we  add  that  this  could  not  easily 
be  otherwise,  it  is  not  from  national  vanity;  we  should 
but  express  the  actual  facts  of  the  case,  based  upon 
the  development  of  the  science.  It  was  natural  that 


THE  STUDY  OF  SANSKRIT.  4T 

the  first  movements  toward  the  founding  of  Hindu  re- 
search, the  first  attempts  to  grasp  the  vastly  accumu- 
lated material  and  find  provisional  forms  for  it,  should 
have  been  the  work  of  Englishmen,  men  who  spent  a 
good  part  of  their  lives  in  India,  and  were  there 
brought  in  constant  contact  with  native  Sanskrit 
scholars.  But  not  less  natural  was  it  that  the  honor 
of  instituting  further  progress  and  gaining  a  deeper  in- 
sight should  be  accorded  to  Germans.  The  two  fields 
of  knowledge  by  which,  especially,  life  and  power  were 
imparted  to  Hindu  investigations  were  and  are  essen- 
tially German.  These  are  comparative  grammar,  which 
we  may  say  was  founded  by  Bopp,  and  that  profound 
and  potent  science,  or  perhaps  more  correctly  ex- 
pressed art,  of  philology,  which  was  practiced  by 
Gottfried  Hermann,  and  likewise  by  Karl  Lachmann, 
a  man  imbued  with  the  proud  spirit  of  Lessing,  full  of 
acute  and  purposeful  ability,  exact  and  truthful  in 
small  matters  as  in  great.  Representatives  of  this 
philology,  moved  to  antipathy  by  many  characteristic 
features  of  the  Hindu  spirit,  and  not  the  least  influ- 
enced by  the  assertion  that  Latin  and  Greek  grammar 
has  this  or  that  to  learn  from  the  Sanskrit,  might  meet 
the  new  science  of  India  with  reserve  or  more  than 
reserve.  Still  this  could  in  no  wise  alter  the  truth  that 
the  study  of  Hindu  texts,  the  investigation  of  Hindu 
literary  remains,  could  be  learned  from  no  better  teach- 
ers than  from  those  masters  who  had  succeeded  in  im- 
proving and  interpreting  the  classical  texts  with  un- 
erring certainty  and  excellence  of  method. 

It  was  a  Leipsic  disciple  of  Hermann  and  Haupt 
who,  at  the  instigation  of  Burnouf,  in  1845,  in  Paris, 
conceived  the  plan  of  publishing  the  Rig  Veda  with 
the  commentary  of  its  Hindu  expounder,  the  abbot  Sa- 


42       EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

yana,  who  flourished  in  the  i4th  century  after  Christ. 
This  was  the  great  work  of  Max  Muller,  the  first  of 
of  those  fundamental  undertakings  on  which  Vedic 
philology  rests.  It  was  necessary  above  all  to  know 
how  the  Brahmins  themselves  translated  the  hymns 
of  their  forefathers,  which  were  preserved  in  the  Rig 
Veda,  from  the  Vedic  language  into  current  Sanskrit, 
and  how  they  solved  the  problems  which  the  grammar 
of  the  Veda  presented,  by  the  means  their  own  gram- 
matical system  offers.  Herein  lay  the  indispensable 
foundation  of  all  further  investigation.  It  was  ne- 
cessary to  weigh  the  Hindu  traditions  concerning  the 
explanation  of  the  Veda,  which  erred  in  underestima- 
tion as  well  as  overestimation,  and  to  test  the  conse- 
quences of  both  errors,  in  order  finally  to  learn  the  art 
of  scientifically  estimating  them.  This  constitutes  the 
great  importance  of  Max  Miiller's  work  extending 
through  a  quarter  of  a  century  (1849-1874).  To  com- 
plete was  easy,  but  to  begin  was  exceedingly  difficult; 
for  most  of  the  grammatical  and  theological  texts 
which  formed  the  basis  for  Sayana's  deductions,  were, 
when  Max  Muller  began  the  work,  books  sealed  with 
seven  seals. 

A  few  years  after  the  first  volume  of  Max  Muller's 
Rig  Veda  appeared,  two  other  scholars  united  in  a 
work  of  still  greater  magnitude.  It  has  long  since  be- 
come to  all  Sanskritists  the  most  indispensable  tool 
for  their  labors.  I  refer  to  the  Sanskrit  dictionary, 
compiled  under  the  commission  of  the  Academy  of 
St.  Petersburg,  Russia,  by  Roth  and  Bohtlingk.  It 
was  intended  to  make  a  dictionary  for  a  language  the 
greatest  and  most  important  part  of  whose  texts  were 
still  not  in  print.  The  work  was  similar  to  that 
which  the  Grimm  Brothers  began  at  the  same  time 


THE  STUDY  OF  SANSKRIT.  43 

for  the  German  language.  Roth  undertook  the  Vedic 
literature,  the  foundation  of  the  whole  ;  Bohtlingk  the 
later  periods.  Friendly  investigators,  and  especially 
Weber,  helped  them  by  bringing  into  use  the  known 
and  accessible  texts  or  manuscripts  that  were  service- 
able to  them.  The  most  important  thing  was,  that  the 
Veda  had  now  for  the  first  time— setting  aside  a  few 
previous  studies — to  be  gone  through  with  a  view  to 
lexicography.  The  explanations  which  the  Hindus 
themselves  were  wont  to  give  of  the  words  of  the  Vedic 
language  were  regarded  as  a  valuable  aid  for  under- 
standing it.  But  the  matter  did  not  rest  here.  "We 
do  not  hold  it,"  said  the  two  compilers  in  their  preface, 
"  to  be  our  task  to  acquire  that  understanding  of  the 
Veda  which  was  current  in  India  some  centuries  ago ; 
but  we  seek  the  sense  which  the  poets  themselves  gave 
to  their  hymns  and  maxims."  They  undertook  "to  get 
at  the  sense  from  the  texts  themselves,  by  collating 
all  the  passages  related  in  word  or  meaning."  In  this 
way  they  hoped  to  re-establish  the  meaning  of  each 
word,  not  as  a  colorless  conception,  but  in  its  individu- 
ality and  therefore  in  its  strength  and  beauty.  The 
Veda  was  thus  to  re-acquire  its  living  sense,  the  full 
wealth  of  its  expression.  The  thought  of  the  earliest 
antiquity  was  to  appear  to  us  in  new  forms  full  of  life 
and  reality. 

The  execution  of  this  work,  carried  on  with  tena- 
cious industry  and  brilliant  success  for  four  and  twenty 
years  (1852-1875),  did  not  fall  short  of  the  magnitude 
of  the  plan  originally  conceived.  In  minor  points  we 
find  it  easy  to  point  out  numerous  deficiencies  and 
errors.  The  two  compilers  well  knew  that  without 
that  spirit  of  boldness  which  does  not  stand  in  fear  of 
unavoidable  errors,  it  were  better  never  to  undertake 


44       EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

their  task.  In  face,  however,  of  the  great  value  of  that 
which  they  have  accomplished,  all  faults  sink  into  in- 
significance. 

What  a  chasm  separates  their  work  from  that  of 
their  predecessor,  Wilson  !  *  In  Wilson's  work  there  is 
little  more  than  a  fair  enumeration  of  the  meanings 
which  Hindu  traditions  assigned  to  the  words  ;  for  his 
dictionary  the  Veda  scarcely  exists,  if  it  does  so  at  all. 
Here  in  the  work  of  Roth  and  Bohtlingk  on  the  other 
hand,  is  brought  to  light  the  immense  wealth,  replete 
with  oriental  splendor,  of  the  richest  of  all  languages ; 
the  history  of  each  word,  and  likewise  the  fortunes 
that  have  befallen  it  in  the  different  periods  of  the  lit- 
erature and  have  determined  its  meaning,  are  brought 
before  our  eyes.  The  difference  between  the  two  great 
periods  in  which  the  development  of  Hindu  research 
falls,  could  not  be  incorporated  more  clearly  than  in 
these  two  dictionaries.  In  the  one  instance  are  found 
the  beginnings,  which  English  science,  resting  imme- 
diately on  the  shoulders  of  the  Indian  pandits,  has 
made  ;  in  the  other  is  the  continuation  of  English 
work  conducted  by  strict  philological  methods  to  a 
breadth  and  depth  incomparably  beyond  those  begin- 
nings, and  at  the  head  of  this  undertaking  stand  Ger- 
man scholars. 

To  Miiller's  great  edition  of  the  Rig  Veda  and  to 
the  St.  Petersburg  Dictionary  further  investigations 
have  been  added  in  great  abundance,  and  these  have 
more  and  more  extended  the  limits  of  our  knowledge 
of  the  Veda.  Already  a  new  generation  of  laborers 
have  taken  their  places  beside  the  original  pioneers  in 
these  once  so  impassable  regions.  As  a  whole,  or  in 
its  separate  parts,  the  Rig  Veda  has  been  repeatedly 

*  Wilson's  dictionary  appeared  in  1819;  a  second  edition  in  1832. 


THE  STUDY  OF  SANSKRIT.  45 

translated.  Its  stock  of  words  and  inflections  has  been 
studied  and  overhauled  from  ever  new  points  of  view 
and  with  ever  new  questions  in  mind.  To  many  a 
picturesque  word  of  the  strong,  harsh  Vedic  language 
its  full  weight  has  thus  been  given  back. 

The  principles  and  practices  according  to  which 
the  old  collectors  and  revisers  of  the  Veda  text  pro- 
ceeded, are  now  being  examined  by  us  with  a  view  to 
being  able  to  determine  what  came  into  their  hands 
as  tradition  and  what  they  themselves  imported  into 
the  traditions.  The  readings  of  the  passages  quoted 
from  the  Rig  Veda  in  the  other  Vedas  are  being  col- 
lected, in  order  to  trace  in  them  the  remains  of  the 
genuine  and  oldest  textual  form.  The  religion  and 
mythology  of  the  Veda  have  been  described ;  the  na- 
tional life  of  the  Vedic  tribes  has  been  portrayed  in 
all  its  phases.  The  texts  afford  the  data  for  such  a 
portraiture  of  these  features  that  it  has  justly  been 
said  that  the  description  given  surpasses  in  clearness 
and  accuracy  Tacitus's  account  of  the  national  life  of 
the  Germans.*  Finally  an  attempt  has  been  made — 
or  rather  an  attempt  will  have  to  be  made,  .for  even  at 
this  time  the  work  is  in  its  beginnings — to  discover 
amid  the  masses  of  Vedic  prayers  and  sacrificial 
hymns  something  which  must  be  an  especially  welcome 
find  to  scientific  curiosity — the  beginning  of  the  Indian 
Epic.f 

There  could  be  no  doubt  that  in  so  poetical  a 
period  the  pleasure  of  romancing  produced  abundant 
fruit.  Short  narratives,  short  hymns  must  then  have 

*  H.  Zimmer  :  Altlndischcs  Leben  :  die  Cultur  tier  vedischen  Arier.  (Ancient 
Indian  Life:  the  Civilization  of  the  Vedic  Aryans.)  Berlin,  1879,  p.  vii. 

t  The  remarks  here  made  on  the  beginnings  of  the  Indf-m  Epic  rest  on 
conceptions  which  I  have  before  briefly  sought  to  establish.  Zeitschrift 
der  Deutschen  Morgenland.  Gesellsch.,  1885,  p.  52,  et  seq. 


46       EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

existed,  enclosed,  as  it  were,  in  narrow  frames.  Thus, 
in  general,  are  the  beginnings  of  epic  poetry  shaped, 
before  poetic  ability  rises  and  ventures  to  narrate  in 
wider  scope  and  with  more  complicated  structure  the 
fate  of  men  and  heroes.  It  seemed,  however,  as  though 
those  beginnings  of  the  Indian  epic  were  lost.  But 
they  were  preserved,  though  to  be  sure  in  a  peculiarly 
fragmentary  form.  In  the  Rig  Veda  there  is  many  a 
medley  of  apparently  disconnected  verses  in  which 
we  have  thought  to  discover  the  accumulated  sweep- 
ings of  poetic  workshops.  In  fact  we  have  here  the 
fragmentary  remains  of  epic  narratives.  These  verses 
were  once  inserted  in  a  prose  framework ;  the  narrative 
part  of  the  Epic  being  in  prose,  and  the  speeches  and 
counter-speeches  in  verse,  just  as,  often,  in  Grimm's 
fairy-tales  when  the  poor  daughter  of  the  king  or  the 
powerful  dwarf  has  to  speak  an  especially  weighty  or 
touching  word,  a  rhyme  or  two  appears. 

Now,  only  the  verses  were  memorized  in  their 
fixed  original  form  by  the  Vedic  tale-tellers.  The 
prose,  each  new  narrator  would  render  with  fresh 
words  ;  until  finally  its  original  subject-matter  fell  into 
almost  total  oblivion,  and  the  verses  alone  survived, 
appearing  sometimes  as  a  series  of  dialogues  suffi- 
ciently long  and  full  of  meaning  to  enable  us  to  gain 
an  understanding  of  the  whole,  and  then  again  as  un- 
recognizable fragments  no  more  admitting  an  infer- 
ence as  to  their  proper  place  and  connection  in  the 
story  of  which  they  form  a  part  than — to  keep  the 
same  comparison — a  couple  of  rhymes  in  one  of 
Grimm's  fairy-tales  would  enable  us  to  restore  the 
whole  tale. 

It  may  be  permitted  for  the  sake  of  making  clear 
what  has  been  said,  to  cite  her  a  passage  from  one  of 


THE  STUDY  OF  SANSKRIT.  47 

those  old  narratives  whose  connection,  at  least  as  a 
whole,  may  be  conjecturally  determined.*  The  scene 
is  between  gods  and  demons,  its  subject  is  the  great 
battle  which  was  fought  in  heaven,  the  thunder  fight, 
which  for  the  strife-loving  spirit  of  that  age  was  the 
pattern  of  their  own  victories.  Vritra,  the  envious 
fiend, kept  the  waters  of  the  clouds  in  captivity,  that  they 
might  not  pour  down  upon  the  earth;  but  God  Indra 
smote  the  demon  with  his  thunderbolt  and  let  the  lib- 
erated waters  flow.  Indra — this  must  have  been  said 
in  the  lost  prose  introduction  to  the  narrative — felt,  as 
he  entered  the  battle,  too  weak  for  his  terrible  oppo- 
nent. The  gods,  faint-hearted,  withdrew  from  his 
side.  Only  one  offered  himself  as  an  ally,  Vayu  (the 
wind),"f"  the  swiftest  of  the  gods,  but  he  demanded  as  a 
reward  for  his  fidelity,  part  of  the  sacrificial  draught 
of  Soma,  which  men  offer  to  Indra.  Vayu  speaks  : 

"  Tis  I.    I  come  to  thee  the  foremost,  as  is  meet ; 
Behind  me  march  in  full  array,  the  Gods. 
Givest  thou  me,  O  Indra,  but  a  share  of  sacrifice, 
And  thou  shalt  do,  with  my  alliance,  valiant  deeds  of  might." 

Indra  accepted  the  alliance  : 

"  Of  the  honied  draught  I  give  thee  the  first  portion ; 
Thine  shall  it  be  ;  for  thee  shall  be  pressed  the  Soma. 
Thou  shalt  stand  as  friend  at  my  right  hand  ; 
Then  shall  we  slay  the  serried  hosts  of  our  foe." 

Then  a  new  person  appears,  a  human  singer.  We 
know  not  whether  a  definite  one  among  the  great 
saints  of  that  early  time,  the  prophets  of  the  later 
generation  of  singers,  was  thought  of  or  not.  He 
wished  to  praise  Indra  ;  but  can  Indra  now  be  praised? 
The  hostile  demon  is  not  yet  conquered  ;  doubts  as  to 

*  Rig  Veda  8,100.  I  omit  a  few  verses  of  obscure  meaning,  and  say  noth- 
ing of  difficulties,  for  which  this  is  not  the  place  to  give  a  solution. 

t  He  is  also  called  V:lta.  This  name  has  been  identified— though  the  cor- 
rectness of  this  is  highly  questionable — with  the  German  name  Woden. 


48       EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

Indra  and  his  might  come  to  the  singer.     He  says   to 
his  people  : 

"  A  song  of  praise  bring  ye  who  long  for  a  blessing, 
If  truth  be  truth,  sing  ye  the  praise  of  Indra." 

"  There  is  no  Indra,"  then  said  many  a  one, 

"  Who  saw  him  ?     Who  is  he  whom  we  shall  praise  ?" 

Then  Indra  himself  gives  answer  to  the  weak- 
hearted  : 

"  Here  stand  I  before  thee,  look  hither,  O  Singer 
In  lofty  strength  I  tower  above  all  beings. 
The  laws  of  sacred  order  make  me  strong ; 
I,  the  smiter,  smite  the  worlds." 

The  confidence  of  the  pious  in  their  God  is  re- 
stored, his  hymn  of  praise  is  sounded.  And  now  Indra 
enters  the  conflict.  The  falcon  has  brought  him  the 
Soma,  and  in  the  intoxication  of  the  ambrosial  drink, 
the  victorious  one  hurls  his  thunderbolt  at  the  demon. 
Like  a  tree  smitten  by  lightning,  falls  the  enemy.  Now 
the  waters  may  flow  forth  from  their  prisons  : 

"  Now  hasten  forth  !  Scatter  thyself  freely  I 
He  who  detained  thee  is  no  more. 
Deep  into  the  side  of  Vitra  has  been  hurled 
The  dreaded  thunderbolt  of  Indra. 

"  Swift  as  thought  sped  the  Falcon  along; 
Pierced  into  the  citadel,  the  brazen. 
And  up  to  heaven,  to  the  thunderer, 
The  soaring  falcon  bore  the  Soma. 

"  In  the  sea  the  thunderbolt  rests, 
Deep  engulfed  in  the  watery  billows. 
The  flowing  and  ever-constant  waters 
To  him  bring  generous  gifts." 

I  pass  over  the  difficult  conclusion  of  the  poem — 
the  creation  of  language  by  Indra  after  the  battle  with 
Vitra.  One  fourth  of  the  languages  that  exist  on  earth, 
Indra  formed  into  clear  and  intelligible  speech ;  these 
are  the  languages  of  men.  The  other  three  fourths, 
however,  have  remained  indistinct  and  incompre- 


THE  STUDY  OF  SANSKRIT.  49 

hensible  ;  these  are  the  languages  that  quadrupeds  and 
birds  and  all  insects  speak. 

This  is  one  of  the  early  narratives  of  the  Hindus 
concerning  the  deeds  of  their  gods  and  heroes.  We 
must  not  endeavor  here,  to  restore  the  lost  portions 
written  in  prose  which  served  to  connect  the  strophes. 
To  make  the  modern  reader  clear  as  to  the  connection 
of  the  verses,  another  method  of  expression  must  be 
chosen  than  that  peculiar  to  the  narrators  of  the  Vedic 
epoch.  As  it  appears,  they  were  content  with  recount- 
ing the  necessary  facts,  or  rather  with  recalling  them 
to  their  hearers,  in  short  and  scanty  sentences. 

The  verses  set  in  the  narrative  are  not  wanting, 
however,  in  flights  of  poetic  eloquence — as  the  poem 
of  Indra's  battle  will  have  shown.  Without  the  finer 
shades  of  human  soul-life,  it  is  true,  yet  in  earnest 
simple  greatness,  like  mountains  or  old  gigantic  -trees, 
the  heroic  figures  of  these  ancient  sagas  stand  forth. 
What  takes  place  among  them  is  similar,  nay  more 
than  similar,  to  that  which  takes  place  in  nature.  For 
as  yet  the  primitive  natural  significance  of  those  gods 
has  hardly  been  veiled  by  the  human  vesture  which 
they  wear,  and  in  the  narratives  of  their  deeds  the 
great  pictures  of  nature's  life  with  its  wonders  and 
terrors  are  everywhere  present.  The  duty  of  bringing 
together  and  interpreting  such  fragments  of  this  most 
ancient  Epic  activity,  Vedic  investigators  must  reckon 
among  their  most  fruitful  though  perhaps  not  their 
easiest  tasks. 


AT  this  stage  of  our  inquiry,  the  question  arises, 
What  do  we  know  of  the  history  of  India  in  the 
age  which  produced  the  Vedas  ?  Where  does  the  pos- 


50       EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

sibility  here  begin  of  fixing  events  chronologically? 
In  that  part  of  the  province  of  history  in  which  this 
precision  is  lacking,  can  any  determinate  lines  of  an- 
other sort  be  drawn  ? 

Of  a  history  of  ancient  India  in  the  sense  in  which 
we  speak  of  the  history  of  Rome,  or  in  the  manner  in 
which  the  history  of  the  Israelitic  nation  is  recounted 
in  the  Old  Testament,  the  Vedas  afford  us  no  testi- 
mony. A  succession  of  events  clearly  united  with  one 
another,  the  presence  of  energetic  personalities,  whose 
aspirations  and  achievements  we  can  understand,  mo- 
mentous struggles  for  the  institution  and  security  of 
civil  government — these  are  things  of  which  nothing 
is  told  to  us.  We  may  add  that  these  are  things  which 
seem  to  have  existed  in  Ancient  India  less  than  in  any 
other  civilized  nation.  The  more  we  know  of  the  his- 
tory of  this  people  the  more  it  appears  like  an  incohe- 
rent mass  of  chance  occurrences.  These  occurrences 
are  wanting  in  that  firm  bearing  and  significant  sense 
which  the  power  of  a  willing  and  conscious  national 
purpose  imparts  to  its  doings.  Only  in  the  history  of 
thought,  and  especially  of  religious  thought,  do  we 
tread,  in  India,  upon  solid  ground.  Of  a  history  in  any 
other  sense  we  can  here  scarcely  speak.  And  a  peo- 
ple who  has  no  history,  has  of  course  no  written  his- 
torical works. 

In  those  eras  in  which,  among  soundly  organized 
nations,  interest  in  the  past  and  its  connection 
with  the  struggles  and  sufferings  of  the  present 
awakes,  when  the  Herodotuses  and  Fabiuses,  the  nar- 
rators of  that  which  has  happened,  are  wont  to  arise, 
the  literary  activity  of  India  was  absorbed  in  theolog- 
ical and  philosophical  speculation.  In  all  occurrences 
was  seen  but  one  aspect,  namely,  that  they  were  tran- 


THE  STUDY  OF  SANSKRIT.  51 

sitory;  and  everything  transitory  was  recognized,  we 
may  not  say  as  a  simile,  yet  as  something  absolutely 
worthless,  an  unfortunate  nothing,  from  which  the 
sage  was  bound  to  divert  his  thoughts. 

We  can  thus  easily  see  how  fully  we  must  renounce 
our  hopes  of  an  exact  result,  when  the  question  is 
raised  as  to  the  time  to  which  the  little  we  know  of  the 
outer  vicissitudes  of  the  ancient  Hindu  tribes  must 
be  assigned,  and,  especially,  as  to  the  time  in  which  the 
great  literary  remains  of  the  Veda  and  the  changes 
which  it  wrought  in  the  Hindu  world  of  thought  be- 
long. The  basis  that  might  serve  toward  definitely 
answering  these  questions  of  chronology — lists  of 
kings  with  statements  of  the  duration  of  each  reign — 
is  wholly  wanting  for  the  Vedic  period.  Of  early 
times  at  least  no  such  lists  have  been  handed  down  to 
us;  there  are  no  traces  indeed  that  such  ever  existed. 
The  later  catalogues,  however,  which  have  been  fab- 
ricated in  the  shops  of  the  Indian  compilers,  can  to- 
day no  more  be  taken  into  consideration  as  the  basis 
of  earnest  research,  than  the  statements  of  the  Roman 
chroniclers  as  to  how  many  years  King  Romulus  and 
King  Numa  reigned.  How  unusual  it  was  in  the  Ve- 
dic times  for  the  Hindus  to  ask  the  "when"  of  events, 
is  shown  very  clearly  by  the  fact,  that  no  expression  was 
in  current  use  by  which  any  year  but  the  present  was 
distinguishable  from  any  other  year. 

The  result  of  this  for  us,  and  likewise,  of  course, 
for  the  science  of  Ancient  India,  is  that  those  long 
centuries  were  and  are  practically  synonymous  with 
immeasurable  time.  The  standard  by  which  we  are 
accustomed  to  compute  the  distance  of  historical  ante- 
cedence in  our  thoughts  or  imaginations,  fail  us  in  this 
richly  developed  civilization  as  completely  as  in  the 


52       EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

prehistoric  domains  of  the  stone  age,  --  in  the  first 
feeble  glimmerings  of  human  existence.  In  fact,  as 
prehistoric  research  tries  to  compute  the  duration  of 
the  past  ages  which  have  given  to  the  earth's  surface 
its  form,  so  as  to  determine  approximately  the  age  of 
the  human  remains  embedded  in  the  strata  of  the 
earth;  so,  in  a  similar  way,  the  investigation  of  the 
Hindu  Vedas,  in  its  attempts  to  compute  the  age  of 
the  Veda,  has  sought  refuge  in  the  gradual  changes 
that  have  imperceptibly  taken  place  in  the  course  of 
centuries,  in  that  great  time-measurer,  the  starry 
heavens. 

There  was  found  in  a  work,  classed  as  one  of  the 
Vedas,  an  astronomical  statement  which  has  served  as 
a  basis  for  such  computations.  The  result  attained 
was  that  this  particular  work  datedfrom  the  year  1181 
B.  C.  (according  to  another  reckoning  1391  B.  C.). 
Unfortunately,  the  belief  that  in  this  way  certain  data 
are  to  be  acquired  had  to  vanish  quickly  enough.  It 
was  soon  found  out  that  the  Vedic  statement  is  not 
sufficient  to  afford  any  tenable  basis  for  astronomical 
computations.  Thus  it  remains  that  for  the  times  of 
the  Vedas  there  is  no  fixed  chronological  date.  And  to 
any  one  who  knows  of  what  things  the  Hindu  au- 
thors were  wont  to  speak,  and  of  what  not,  it  will  be 
tolerably  certain,  that  even  the  richest  and  most  unex- 
pected discoveries  of  new  texts,  though  they  may 
vastly  extend  our  knowledge  in  other  respects,  will  in 
this  respect  make  no  changes  whatever. 

There  are  two  great  events  in  the  history  of  India 
with  which  this  darkness  begins  to  be  dispelled — the 
one  approximately,  and  the  other  accurately,  referable 
to  an  ascertainable  point  of  time.  These  are  the  ad- 
vent of  Buddha  and  the  contact  of  the  Hindus  with 


THE  STUDY  OF  SANSKRIT.  53 

the  Greeks  under  Alexander  the  Great  and  his  succes- 
sors. 

That  it  was  the  old  Buddhistic  communities  in  In- 
dia that  first  began  the  work  of  gathering  up  the  con- 
nected traditions  within  historical  memory,  seems 
certain.  At  least  this  corresponds  with  the  apparent 
and  accepted  course  of  events.  To  Vedic  and  Brah- 
manical  philosophy  all  earthly  fortunes  were  abso- 
lutely worthless — a  vanity  of  vanities;  and  over 
against  them  stood  the  significant  stillness  of  the  Eter- 
nal, undisturbed  by  any  change.  But  for  the  follow- 
ers of  Buddha,  there  was  a  point  at  which  this  Eternal 
entered  the  world  of  temporal  things,  and  thus  there 
was  for  them  a  piece  of  history  which  maintained  its 
place  beside  or  rather  directly  within  their  religious 
teachings.  This  was  the  history  of  the  advent  of 
Buddha  and  the  life  of  the  communities  founded  by 
him. 

There  is  a  firm  recollection  of  the  assemblies  in 
which  the  most  honored  and  learned  leaders  of  the 
communities,  and  great  bands  of  monks  coming  to- 
gether from  far  and  wide,  determined  weighty  points 
of  doctrine  and  ritual.  The  kings  under  whom 
these  councils  were  held  are  named,  and  the  prede- 
cessors of  these  kings  are  mentioned  even  as  far 
back  as  the  pious  King  Bimbisara,  the  contemporary 
and  zealous  protector  of  Buddha.  Of  the  series  of 
kings  which  in  this  way  have  been  fixed  by  the  chron- 
icles of  the  Buddhistic  order,  two  figures  are  espe- 
cially prominent — Tschandragupta  (i,  e.,  the  one  pro- 
tected by  the  Moon)  and  his  grandson  Asoka  (the 
Painless).  Tschandragupta  is  a  personality  well  known 
to  Greek  and  Roman  historians.  They  call  him  San- 
drokyptos,  and  relate  that  after  the  death  of  Alexander 


54       EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

the  Great  (in  the  year  323  B.  C.'),  he  successfully  op- 
posed the  power  of  the  Greeks  on  their  invasion  into 
India,  and  lifted  himself  from  a  humble  position  to 
that  of  ruler  of  a  wide  kingdom.  Asoka,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  not  mentioned  by  the  Greeks;  but  in  one  of 
his  inscriptions — by  him  were  made  the  oldest  inscrip- 
tions discovered  in  India,  and  these  have  been  found 
on  walls  and  pillars  in  the  most  distant  parts  of  the 
peninsula — he  himself  speaks  of  Antijoka,  king  of  the 
lona  (lonians,  /'.  c.,  Greeks),  Antikina,  Alikasandara, 
and  other  Greek  monarchs.* 

Here  at  last  a  place  is  reached  where  the  his- 
torical investigator  of  India  reaches  firm  ground. 
Events  whose  years  and  centuries — as  though  they 
occurred  on  another  planet — are  not  commensurable 
with  those  of  the  earth,  meet  at  this  point  with  spheres 
of  events  which  we  know  and  are  able  to  measure.  If 
we  reckon  back  from  the  fixed  dates  of  Tschandra- 
gupta  and  Asoka  to  Buddha — and  we  have  no  grounds 
for  regarding  the  statements  of  time  which  we  find  re- 
specting Buddhistic  chronology  as  not  at  least  ap- 
proximately correct — we  find  the  year  of  the  great 
teacher's  death  to  be  about  480  B.  C.  His  work  there- 
fore falls  in  the  time  at  which  the  Greeks  fought  their 
battles  for  freedom  from  Persian  rule,  and  the  funda- 
mental lines  of  a  republican  constitution  were  drawn 
in  Rome. 

Buddha's  life,  however,  marks  the  extreme  limit  at 
which  we  may  find  even  approximate  dates.  Beyond 
this,  through  the  long  centuries  which  must  have 

*  Antijoka  is  AntiochasTheos;  Antikina,  Antigonos  Gonatos;  Alikasandara, 
of  course,  not  Alexander  the  Great,  but  Alexander  of  Epirus,  son  of  Pyr- 
rhus,  the  enemy  of  the  Romans.  All  these  princes  reigned  about  the  middle 
of  the  third  century  B.  C.  Of  Alexander  the  Great  in  India  no  traces  have 
been  found,  with  the  exception  of  a  coin  which  bears  his  picture  and  his  name. 


THE  STUDY  OF  SANSKRIT.  55 

elapsed  from  the  beginning  of  the  Rig  Veda  epoch  to 
that  of  Buddha,  the  question  still  remains:  What  was 
the  succession  of  events — the  few  events  of  which  we 
may  speak  ?  What  the  order  in  which  the  great  strata 
of  literary  remains  were  formed  ?  We  observe  the  re- 
lation which  one  text  bears  to  the  others  which  appear 
to  have  previously  existed;  we  follow  the  gradual 
changes  which  the  language  has  suffered,  the  blotting 
out  of  old  words  and  forms  and  the  appearance  of  new 
ones;  we  count  the  long  and  short  syllables  of  the 
verses  so  as  to  learn  the  imperceptible  but  strictly  reg- 
ular course  by  which  their  rhythms  have  been  freed 
from  old  laws  of  construction  and  subjected  to  new 
forms;  moving  in  a  parallel  direction  with  these  lin- 
guistic and  metrical  changes  we  note  the  changes  of 
religious  ideas,  and  of  the  contents  as  well  as  the  ex- 
ternal forms  of  intellectual  and  spiritual  life.  Thus  we 
learn  in  the  chaos  of  this  literature  ever  more  surely  to 
distinguish  the  old  from  the  new,  and  understand  the 
course  of  development  which  has  run  through  both. 

Many  a  path,  it  is  true,  in  which  research  hoped 
to  press  forward,  has  been  shown  to  be  delusive 
and  worthless  ;  problems  have  had  to  be  given  up, 
changed,  and  presented  in  different  forms.  But  in  its 
last  results  the  work  has  not  been  in  vain.  For,  in 
respect  to  the  Veda  in  particular,  and  the  antiquities 
of  India  in  general,  we  have  learned  to  recognize  the 
principal  directions  in  which  the  tendencies  of  histor- 
ical growth  are  to  be  traced. 

From  the  second  century  of  Hindu  research  we  can 
scarcely  expect  discoveries  similar  to  those  which  the 
first  has  brought:  such  a  sudden  uprising  of  unusual, 
broad,  fruitful  fields  of  historical  knowledge.  But 
we  may  still  hope  that  the  future  of  our  science  will 


56     EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

bring  results  of  another  sort  no  less  rich — the  expla- 
nation of  hitherto  inexplicable  phenomena,  the  trans- 
formation of  that  which  is  half  known  into  that  which 
is  fully  known. 


ASPECTS  OF  MODERN  PSYCHOLOGY. 


ASPECTS  OF  MODERN  PSYCHOLOGY. 

BY    JOSEPH    JASTROW,    PH.    D. 


INTRODUCTORY. 

THE  study  of  mental  phenomena  has  been  pursued 
with  varying  interests  and  from  various  points  of  view 
throughout  almost  the  entire  historical  period  of  the 
development  of  man.  The  various  roots  from  which 
diverge  the  departments  of  learning  so  sharply  spe- 
cialized and  accurately  defined  with  us,  are  at  bottom 
very  closely  bound  together  by  a  community  in  the 
general  welfare  of  knowledge.  An  early  distinction  is 
that  between  the  wise  man,  the  initiated,  the  adept, 
and  the  common  every-day  man,  the  one  uninitiated  into 
the  mysteries  of  knowing,  the  arts  of  doing.  It  is  in 
this  search  after  the  wisdom  of  experience,  this  culti- 
vation of  the  contemplative  habit,  that  mind-lore  has 
its  origin.  The  first  branch  of  the  general  growth  to 
bear  fruit  is  Philosophy, — not  specialized  as  yet,  but 
combining  an  appreciation  of  facts,  a  sympathy  with 
human  trials  and  successes,  with  a  love  of  lofty  ideals 
and  of  the  processes  by  which  they  are  developed  and 
attained.  Just  as  we  find  Poetry  reaching  a  high  de- 
velopment, while  Science  is  still  in  its  infancy,  so  the 
side  of  mind-lore  that  arises  from  the  experience  of 
thoughts  and  emotions  finds  a  successful  expression 
long  before  the  apparently  simpler  results  of  observa- 
tion and  generalization  are  obtained.  It  is  only  after 
many  systems  have  been  elaborated  and  the  merits  of 


60       EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

rival  theories  discussed,  that  attention  is  directed  to 
the  basal  facts  upon  which  systems  are  built,  and  to 
the  methods  by  which  reasoning  is  conducted.  These, 
as  almost  all  the  typical  stages  in  the  development  of 
thought,  are  admirably  illustrated  in  the  history  of 
Greek  philosophy. 

Looking  through  modern  spectacles  at  the  check- 
ered career  of  the  philosophical  sciences  in  the  past, 
one  would  ascribe  the  first  distinct  appreciation  of  the 
scientific  study,  of  mental  phenomena  to  Aristotle,  in 
whom  were  combined  to  an  extraordinary  degree  the 
observing  habits  of  the  naturalist  with  the  speculative 
powers  of  the  thinker.  The  spirit  of  his  activity  can 
be  traced  in  the  writings  of  later  savants,  but  it  is  in 
the  main  overshadowed  by  a  dominant  interest  in 
speculation  for  its  own  sake,  doomed  in  succeeding 
centuries  to  be  displaced  by  a  barren  mixture  of  the- 
ological disputation,  of  hair-splitting  logomachy,  in 
which  the  method  of  authority  was  exalted  and  that  of 
tangible  proof  ignored,  and  of  an  unmethodical  prop- 
agation of  narrowing  systems.  In  the  general  revival 
of  learning  following  these  "dark  ages,"  mind-lore 
matures  into  a  fruitage  replete  with  careful  reason- 
ings, methodical  researches,  and  suggestive,  though 
in  great  part  premature,  generalizations.  The  study 
of  psychology  as  a  distinct  department  of  knowledge 
is  cultivated,  though  with  little  uniformity  of  design  or 
results.  Scientific  psychology  can  hardly  be  said  to 
exist  before  the  psychological  importance  of  the  re- 
sults obtained  by  the  physiologists  and  cognate  sci- 
entists, had  been  recognized.  This  had  been  done, 
though  in  ways  different  amongst  themselves  and  de- 
cidedly so  from  our  way,  by  Descartes  and  Bacon,  by 
Kant  and  Locke. 


ASPE  CTS  OF  MODERN  PS  YCHOL  OGY.     6 1 

Turning  more  especially  to  this  second,  the  obser- 
vational root  of  mind-lore,  we  find  in  scattered  ob- 
servations of  physicians  and  physiologists,  from  Hip- 
pocrates and  Galen  on,  a  more  or  less  appreciative  in- 
sight into  that  ever  mysterious  interdependence  of 
body  and  mind.  From  the  theory  of  the  savage*  who 
explains  the  phenomena  of  dreaming  as  the  tempo- 
rary separation  of  body  and  soul, — the  latter  in  its  lib- 
erated state  wandering  about  and  gathering  strange 
experiences  which  it  imparts  to  the  possessor  of  the 
body  upon  reentering  it, — to  the  attempt  of  Democ- 
ritus,  to  give  a  closely  similar  conception  a  more  sci- 
entific formulation  ;  from  these  to  the  mediaeval  notion 
of  the  ousting  of  the  soul  from  the  body  and  the  inva- 
sion of  a  foreign  spirit,  thus  explaining  the  varied 
forms  of  insanity  and  heresy,  and  thence  by  an  appar- 
ently short  and  yet  so  painfully  long  advance  to  the 
attitude  of  the  modern  scientist  who  unconcernedly 
dismisses  the  dream  as  the  natural  effect  of  an  over- 
burdened digestion,  and,  with  the  all  increased  care 
and  humanity  that  the  change  of  conception  brings 
with  it,  treats  the  insanity  as  the  evidence  of  a  disor- 
dered brain ;  in  all  these  stages  we  recognize  so  many 
attempts  at  a  working  explanation  of  the  bond  that 
keeps  soul  and  body  together.  Omitting  any  more 
detailed  reference  to  that  gradual  advance  and  spread 
of  scientific  notions,  especially  in  the  fields  of  biology 
and  medicine,  that  has  so  profoundly  influenced  every- 
thing that  is  modern,  I  will  pass  to  the  more  imme- 
diate ancestry  of  Modern  Scientific  Psychology. 

A  word  often  used  as  synonymous  with  this, — 
Physiological  Psychology, — indicates  one  most  im- 
portant groundwork  of  the  science.  Amongst  the 

*See  Tylor,  "Early  History  of  Mankind,"  p.  7,  et  sqq. 


62       EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

factors  contributing  to  the  formative  period  of  modern 
physiology,  the  writings  and  spirit  of  Johannes  Mtiller 
are  typically  important.  He  drew  distinct  attention 
to  the  fact  that  a  vast  portion  of  the  phenomena  of 
sensation  and  of  the  higher  faculties,  in  part,  forms 
the  common  property  of  Physiology  and  Psychology  ; 
that  many  of  the  problems  concerning  which  philos- 
ophers had  allowed  themselves  more  or  less  arbitrary 
opinions  could  be  definitely  decided  by  the  crucial  test 
of  physiological  experiment.  With  this  came  the  de- 
monstration of  the  posterior  and  anterior  roots  of  the 
spinal  cord  as  the  agents  of  the  sensory  and  motor, 
the  impressible  and  the  expressive,  functions;  thus  fur- 
nishing two  rubrics  fundamental  to  psychology.  Again 
the  establishment  of  reflex  action  as  the  physiological 
element  by  the  complication  of  which  many  higher, 
more  intellectual,  forms  of  action  and  reaction  could 
be  explained  ;  the  measuring  of  the  time  that  a  nervous 
impulse  requires  for  traveling  along  the  nerve  ;  and 
more  recently,  the  association  of  definite  regions  of  the 
brain  with  definite  sensory  and  motor  groups  of  func- 
tions, the  irritation  of  which  areas  excites  these  func- 
tions and  the  extirpation  of  which  removes  them  ;  all 
these,  like  the  dark  lines  in  the  solar  spectrum,  are  but 
convenient  points  for  marking  off  the  important  stages 
of  what  is  really  a  slow  and  continuous  development. 
They  have  all  profoundly  influenced,  and  will  for  all 
time  be  important  factors  in  the  dominant  conceptions 
of  the  nature  of  the  psycho-physic  organism.  With 
this  doctrine  of  the  constant  interdependence  of  bodily 
and  mental  states  once  fairly  under  way  and  its  signif- 
icance constantly  accentuated  by  new  discoveries; 
with,  too,  the  increased  solidarity  of  the  entire  range 
of  mental  phenomena  opened  up  by  the  conceptions  of 


A  SPE  CTS  OF  MODERN  PS  YCHOL  OGY.     63 

evolution,  the  progress  was  many-sided  and  rapid. 
For  the  most  part,  however,  the  contributions  were 
isolated  and  uncoordinated  ;  the  physiologist  touched 
the  problems  from  one  special  side  ;  the  physicist  saw 
that  he  too  must  consider  certain  psychological  aspects 
of  his  work  ;  the  physician  appreciated  the  tie  that  af- 
filiates the  abnormal  processes  with  which  he  deals  to 
the  operations  of  the  normal  mind  ;  the  philosopher, 
the  educator,  and  the  anthropologist  must  all  in  part 
be  psychologists.  Meanwhile,  too,  certain  special 
psychological  investigations,  revealing  essentially  new 
problems  and  results,  were  undertaken.  The  work  of 
Fechner*  upon  the  psycho-physic  law,  that  of  Helm- 
holtz  f  upon  the  relation  of  hearing  and  sight  to  their 
physical  stimuli,  belong  to  this  category.  It  is  not  un- 
til 1874  that  a  comprehensive  treatise  J  appeared  aim- 
ing to  present  at  least  the  more  important  aspects  and 
results  of  the  new  science  that  had  grown  up  between 
the  gaps  left  by  the  rugged  outlines  of  the  other  scien- 
ces at  their  points  of  contact. 

I  have  dwelt  thus  broadly,  and  necessarily  sketch- 
ily,  upon  the  historical  antecedents  of  modern  psychol- 
ogy, to  show  that  it  is  bound  to  the  past  by  real  and 
intimate  ties,  and  that,  however  bold  and  striking  is 
the  contrast  between  the  psychology  of  to-day,  and 
still  more  so  of  to-morrow,  to  that  of  yesterday,  the 
inherent  importance  of  the  historical  sense  will  ever 
prevent  a  too  radical  rupture  with  the  past  and  should 
also  allay  the  fears  of  those  who  look  gloomily  upon 
the  materialism  of  the  present.  It  remains  to  portray, 
as  best  I  can,  the  several  fields  of  study  and  the  various 


*"Elemente  der  Psychophysik,"  II.  Vol.,  Leipzig,  1860. 

t  "  Physiologische  Optik,"  1867.  "  Die,Lehre  von  den  Tonempfindungen." 

t  Wundt,  "  Elemente  der  Physiologischen  Psychologic." 


64       EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

points  of  view  that  together  form  the  content  and  the 
spirit  of  the  new  psychology. 

We  have  then  first  this  great  department  in  which 
Physiology  and  Psychology  go  hand  in  hand.  The 
general  problem  is  the  orderly  correlation  of  the  phys- 
ical analogues  of  all  those  functions,  small  and  great, 
that  in  one  way  or  another  enter  into  the  mental  life. 
The  general  plans  and  arrangements  of  nervous  sys- 
tems; the  detailed  properties  of  nerve-fibre,  of  nerve- 
cell,  and  of  muscle  as  the  elementary  substrata  of  pur- 
posive action  ;  the  control  and  subordination  of  the 
various  functions  in  the  hierarchy  of  nervous  centres 
in  man,  and  in  the  lower  animals  ;  the  special  relation 
of  that  highest  product  of  evolution,  the  cortex  of  the 
human  brain,  to  the  specially  or  prominently  human 
functions,  as  seen  in  the  light  of  anatomy,  of  pathol- 
ogy, and  of  experimentation  upon  animals  ;  the  grad- 
ual and  orderly  growth  in  size  and  complexity  of  the 
nervous  system  as  paralleled  by  the  increase  of  psychic 
faculty  ; — these  are  but  a  few  of  the  many  vital  prob- 
lems that  have  called  out  the  ingenuity  and  the  labor 
of  eminent  scientists,  but  are  still  far  from  a  complete 
solution. 

A  borderland  between  this  field  and  the  science  of 
Psycho-Physics  proper  is  formed  by  the  study  of  Sen- 
sation. The  constant  stream  of  impressions  flowing  in 
upon  us  from  birth  till  death, — a  stream  converted  into 
a  rushing  torrent  by  the  environment  of  our  modern 
civilization,  is  primarily  conditioned  upon  the  nature 
and  limitations  of  our  sense-organs.  The  senses  of 
sight  and  hearing,  as  the  more  especially  intellectual 
senses,  naturally  demand  the  greatest  attention.  The 
one  is  preeminently  the  organ  of  space-perception  as 
the  other  is  of  time-perception;  the  one  gives  us  the 


A SPE CTS  OF  MODERN  PS J '6*7/0 LOG\ '.     6 5 

understanding  of  written,  the  other  of  spoken  language  ; 
the  one  is  keenly  sensitive  to  minute  distinctions  of 
form  and  color,  and  thus  furnishes  the  basis  of  the  fine 
arts,  while  the  other  is  gifted  with  a  truly  mysterious 
power  of  analyzing  the  mathematical  relations  of  tone 
intervals,  thus  making  possible  the  music  '  that  hath 
charms '  ;  each  illustrates  how  intricately  inference  is 
intermingled  with  crude  sensation,  and  how  dominant 
traits  of  mind  are  connected  with  superiorly  sensitive 
senses.  Touch  and  the  motor  sensations  are  hardly 
less  important  ;  the  one  yielding  the  most  immediate 
and,  perhaps,  most  primitive  sensation-group,  while 
the  other  introduces  the  active,  the  imitating  faculty, 
so  fundamental  in  education. 

I  can  only  mention  by  name  the  vast  sciences  of 
physiological  optics  and  acoustics,  that  have  done 
more  than  almost  any  others  to  perfect  our  knowledge 
of  the  adaptation  of  means  to  end  in  nature,  in  order  to 
gain  space  for  a  few  words  regarding  Psycho-Physics 
in  its  restricted  sense.  This  includes  the  experimental 
treatment  of  the  psychological  aspects  of  sensation, 
chief  amongst  which  is  the  group  of  problems  center- 
ing about  the  psycho-physic  law.  This  law,  concern- 
ing which  so  large  a  literature  has  accumulated,  em- 
phasizes the  fact  that  we  are  sensitive  to  ratios  rather 
than  to  absolute  differences  of  sensation,  that  relations 
and  relative  distinctions  are  more  important  to  us 
than  absolute  ones.  The  every-day  experiences  that 
the  rich  man  needs  a  greater  increase  of  wealth  to 
ensure  a  pleasurable  sensation  than  the  poor  man,  or 
that  the  system  impregnated  with  a  drug  needs  larger 
and  larger  doses  to  produce  the  same  effect,  find  in 
the  sphere  of  sensation  an  exact  formulation  in  the  law 
of  Weber,  that  the  distinguishability  of  two  stimuli 


66       EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

differing  slightly  in  intensity  depends  simply  upon 
their  ratio,  (we  tell  ten  ounces  from  eleven  as  readily 
as  twenty  from  twenty-two,)  which  in  turn  leads  to 
the  formulation  of  Fechner,  that  as  the  sensations  in- 
crease in  an  arithmetical  series  of  equally  marked  sen- 
sation-differences, the  stimuli  increase  in  a  geometric 
series  with  a  constant  ratio.  The  wide  range  of  facts 
covered  by  this  law,  (influencing,  as  we  can  to-day 
show,  the  sorting  of  the  stars  into  magnitudes  by  the 
ancient  astronomers,)  still  awaits  a  clear  exposition 
and  an  interpretation  capable  of  harmonizing  the  ap- 
parently contradictory  results  of  different  observers. 
Another  equally  recent  branch  of  Experimental 
Psychology  deals  with  the  Time-relations  of  mental 
phenomena.  A  vast  share  of  all  conduct  may  be  use- 
fully regarded  as  the  more  or  less  complicated  elabo- 
rations of  that  very  natural  and  simple  performance  of 
the  brainless  frog  which,  when  a  bit  of  paper  soaked 
in  acid  is  placed  upon  its  thigh,  mechanically  sets  up 
movements  resulting  in  the  removal  of  the  irritant. 
The  diplomat's  decision  upon  learning  the  complicated 
situation  of  political  affairs,  to  pursue  a  certain  line  of 
conduct,  like  the  frog's  reflex  action,  is  simply  the  re- 
sponse to  an  external  stimulus ;  and  we  can  measure 
the  mental  complexity  of  such  responses,  or  reactions, 
by  the  time  needed  for  their  performance.  When  I 
measure  the  time  required  for  pressing  a  key  in  imme- 
diate response  to  a  flash  of  light,  I  measure  the  time 
for  the  nervous  impulse  to  proceed  from  eye  to  brain 
and  from  brain  to  hand,  and  other  physiological  fac- 
tors; but  I  am  also  enabled  to  measure  the  time  of 
purely  mental  phenomena.  For  if  I  agree  to  react 
only  when  I  see  a  red  light,  then  the  additional  time 
measures  how  long  it  takes  to  perceive  that  an  object 


ASPECTS  OF  MODERN  PSYCHOLOGY.     67 

is  red.  Furthermore,  if  I  agree  to  react  with  my  right 
hand  if  a  red  light,  but  with  the  left  hand  if  a  blue 
light  is  shown,  the  additional  time  tells  me  how  long 
I  need  to  perform  a  simple  act  of  choice,  and  so  on. 
By  much  toil  and  by  the  aid  of  ingenious  and  accurate 
apparatus  the  times  of  all  the  simpler  processes  that 
lie  at  the  basis  of  mental  life, — discrimination,  choice, 
associations  of  all  kinds, — -have  been  measured  and  an 
unexpected  insight  has  been  gained  into  the  influence 
of  attention,  of  familiarity,  of  expectation,  of  fatigue, 
and  the  action  of  drugs,  upon  the  rate  and  nature  of 
mental  operations.  The  field  is  a  new  one  and  un- 
doubtedly has  a  most  promising  future  ;  we  may  per- 
haps even  learn  how  to  make  our  lives  longer  by 
learning  how  to  go  through  mental  operations  more 
quickly  and  with  a  minimum  of  friction. 

The  unfoldment  of  mental  faculty  in  the  human  in- 
fant has  been  elevated  to  the  dignity  of  a  special  study 
under  trie-title  of  Psycho-Genesis,  or  more  simply  In- 
fant Psychology.  The  order  of  appearance  of  various 
powers,  both  receptive  and  expressive,  can  only  be 
ascertained  by  the  exact  observation  of  a  large  num- 
ber of  normal  infants.  The  earliest  reflex  actions  and 
the  general  helplessness  of  the  infant  show  the  pov- 
erty of  our  original  endowment  compared  with  that  of 
an  animal  lower  in  the  scale.  The  latter,  for  example 
a  chicken,  emerges  from  the  shell  ready  to  enter  upon 
the  trials  of  life,  and  pecks  quite  accurately  at  a  grain 
of  corn  when  first  it  sees  it, — a  feat  impossible  to  the 
human  infant  for  many  months.  It  is  just  because  the 
child  knows  so  little  at  the  outset  that  it  has  the  op- 
portunity of  knowing  so  much  more  at  the  end ;  it  is 
less  freighted  with  inborn  habits,  freer  to  develop 
habits  of  its  own ;  and  again  it  is  from  the  long  dura- 


68       EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

tion  of  this  developmental  period  in  the  human  child 
that  the  word  education  derives  its  supreme  import- 
ance. For  concrete  instances  of  the  manifold  inter- 
ests and  great  value  of  such  observations,  I  must  refer 
to  the  studies  of  Preyer  and  Kussmaul,  of  Perez  and 
Taine,  of  Darwin  and  Pollock. 

What  the  department  of  Animal  Psychology  would 
include  can  readily  be  inferred.  Its  aim  is  to  show  the 
continuous  steps  in  the  evolution  of  faculty  in  the 
animal  series,  showing  where  and  how  certain  facul- 
ties reach  a  maximum  of  development,  and  wherein 
these  differ  from  the  peculiarly  human  faculties.  Quite 
recently  Mr.  Romanes*  has  drawn  up  a  table  indicat- 
ing certain  general  levels  of  intelligence  as  tested  by 
the  appearance  of  certain  emotions  and  actions,  ac- 
cording to  which  the  performances  of  different  groups 
of  animals  may  be  rated.  The  widespread  sympathy 
that  the  evolutionary  hypothesis  gives  to  the  study  of 
animals  is  sufficient  to  ensure  for  it  a  rapid  growth. 
The  great  difficulty  is  the  keeping  apart  of  observa- 
tion and  inference,  and  the  great  danger  is  the  inter- 
pretation of  animal  conduct  too  closely  by  the  feelings 
and  reflections  accompanying  our  own  actions. 

Anthropological  Psychology  finds  its  material  in 
such  of  the  records,  past  and  present,  of  primitive  man 
as  deal  with  the  processes  and  products  of  mental  ac- 
tion. The  notions  of  the  uncivilized  regarding  nature 
and  the  universe ;  the  universal  tendency  to  personifi- 
cation, the  projecting  into  the  external  world  the  feel- 
ings and  reflections  of  the  inner-self ;  the  formation  of 
myths  to  satisfy  that  primitive  curiosity  that  is  the 
ancestor  of  scientific  inquiry;  the  crystallization  of 

*  "  Mental  Evolution  in  Animals,"  1884,  and  "  Mental  Evolution  in  Man," 
1869. 


ASPECTS  OF  MODERN  PSYCHOLOGY,      (x) 

thought-habits  into  curious  customs,  and  the  strange 
survival  and  perversion  of  such  customs  long  after 
their  original  meaning  has  been  forgotten.  In  these 
it  is  that  the  psychologist  finds  interesting  and  valu- 
able information  regarding  the  earliest  stages  of  that 
long  development  that  makes  for  knowledge  and  civ- 
ilization. 

The  last  three  departments  of  psychology  may  be 
appropriately  included  under  the  general  name  of 
Comparative  Psychology,  for  in  each  we  are  compar- 
ing stages  of  development  with  one  another  and  with 
the  mature,  civilized  human  intellect ;  and  .the  interest 
of  all  three  is  much  enhanced  by  the  lighc  which  each 
sheds  upon  the  others.  The  generalization  that  the 
individual  repeats  in  parvo  the  history  of  the  race  con- 
nects the  study  of  the  child  with  that  of  primitive  man, 
while  the  equally  suggestive  analogy  between  the 
stages  of  child-growth  and  the  evolution  of  mental 
faculty,  especially  as  strengthened  by  an  extension  of 
the  comparison  to  embryological  peculiarities,  serves 
as  the  bridge  between  the  psychology  of  the  infant  a"nd 
of  the  lower  animals.  The  methods  employed  in  all 
three  are  similar,  and  they  serve  to  verify  one  another's 
results  and  to  supplement  one  another's  facts. 

There  is  finally  the  very  comprehensive  depart- 
ment of  Morbid  Psychology.  This  includes,  primarily, 
the  varied  phenomena  of  diseased  mental  action,  the 
many  forms  of  emotional  disturbance,  the  curious  and 
fantastic  delusions  of  paranoia,  the  arrest  of  mental 
development  in  idiocy.  Not  only  do  we  recognize  in 
disease  an  experiment  prepared  by  nature  and  enab- 
ling us  to  detect  the  functions  of  delicate  and  minute 
partsof  the  organism,  but  the  study  of  the  abnormal  sheds 
direct  light  upon  the  nature  of  the  normal  and  gives 


jo        EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

us  knowledge  not  easily  obtainable  from  other  sources. 
Thus  the  Maw  of  regression"  showing  the  decay 
of  mental  faculty  to  follow  an  order  the  reverse  of  the 
order  of  acquisition,  analyzes  the  stages  of  such  acqui- 
sition more  perfectly  than  can  be  done  from  the  rapid 
and  complex  growth  of  faculty  ;  and  so  reliable  is  this 
law  that  we  can  predict  by  it  the  successive  loss  of  the 
different  parts  of  speech  in  the  gradual  decay  of  lan- 
guage. Ribot's  interesting  monographs  upon  "The 
Diseases  of  Memory,"  "  The  Diseases  of  the  Will," 
and  "The  Diseases  of  Personality,"  aptly  illustrate 
the  point  of  view  here  described.  But  the  depart- 
ment of  morbid  psychology  really  includes  much 
more  ;  it  covers  all  those  intermediate  forms  of 
mental  divergence  that  bridge  over  the  gap  between 
the  sane  and  the  insane,  "the  genius  to  madness 
near  allied  "  ;  it  includes  the  natural  history  of  error, 
the  subtile  processes  by  which  sense-deceptions  pass 
into  illusions,  and  illusions  give  place  to  hallucina- 
tions, as  well  as  an  analysis  of  that  powerful  men- 
tal contagion  that  reveals  itself  so  terribly  in  the 
history  of  psychic  epidemics ;  it  includes,  too,  those 
minor  forms  of  defect,  blindness  and  deafness,  the 
study  of  which  admirably  illustrates  the  role  of  sen- 
sation in  the  higher  intellectual  development.  And  if 
we  are  disinclined  to  regard  that  very  heterogeneous 
group  of  problems  now  summed  up  under  the  term 
"Psychic  Research,"  as  a  separate  department  of 
psychology,  we  may  treat  of  it  as  an  appendix  to  the 
topic  now  under  consideration.  Of  paramount  import- 
ance here  is  the  study  of  hypnotism,  that  has  received 
so  remarkable  an  impetus  during  the  last  five  years. 
Though  the  true  nature  of  hypnotism  is  still  a  matter 
of  dispute,  it  has  been  rescued  from  the  hands  of 


ASPECTS  OF  MODERN  PS ) '( Y/6>/,  OG  V.      71 

charlatans  with  whom  it  dwelt  long  enough  to  acquire 
an  unenviable  reputation,  it  has  been  enriched  with  an 
embarrassing  number  of  novel  facts  and  suggestive 
distinctions,  it  has  been  utilized  as  an  unexpectedly 
fertile  mode  of  analysis  of  complicated  psychological 
traits,  and  it  has  received  promising  practical  applica- 
tion to  the  treatment  of  disease.  In  this  study  and 
that  of  allied  fields  we  are  being  overwhelmed  with 
facts  and  theories  from  every  source,  good  and  bad, 
sound  and  unsound  ;  difficult  as  it  often  is  to  under- 
stand what  is  reported  upon  the  basis  of  existing 
knowledge,  and  strong  as  is  the  temptation  t'o  inter- 
pret this  difficulty  as  the  proof  of  hitherto  undis- 
covered if  not  supernatural  agencies,  we  have  reason 
to  think  that  the  best  results — and  surely  no  one  can 
doubt  their  supreme  importance — will  be  secured  by 
the  use  of  that  caution  and  firm  reserve,  that  have 
always  characterized  the  ways  of  science. 

I  need  hardly  add  that  the  divisions  of  psychology 
here  suggested  are  not  the  sharp  boundaries  between 
neighboring  territories,  but  rather  conveniently  placed 
centres  from  which  groups  of  facts  radiate,  and  to- 
wards which  dominant  interests  converge.  Not  only 
do  the  divisions  shade  into  one  another,  but  by  form- 
ing parts  of  one  science,  they  necessarily  show  eviden- 
ces of  that  organic  unity  which  rationalizes  our  frag- 
ments of  knowledge  and  makes  "all  the  world  akin." 


72       EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 


PSYCHOLOGY  IN  GERMANY. 


HAVING  reviewed  the  general  departments  of  mod- 
ern psychological  research,  I  shall  attempt  to  portray 
in  the  light  of  a  recent  European  tour,  the  actual  con- 
dition of  the  study  in  the  chief  educational  countries 
of  Europe,  and  will  append  to  this  some  notes  upon 
psychological  progress  at  home.  The  present  contri- 
bution will  deal  with  Germany  and  indirectly  with  the 
educationally  allied  countries  of  Austria  and  Northern 
Europe. 

The  two  most  prominent  German  contributions  to 
psychology  are  in  completing  our  knowledge  of  the 
physiological  bases  of  mental  action  and  in  posing  and 
partially  solving  the  specifically  psycho-physical  prob- 
lems of  Experimental  Psychology.  The  former  devel- 
oped naturally  from  the  restoration  to  recognized  kin- 
ship of  two  sciences  that  had  become  separated  by 
mutual  misunderstandings,  and  had  been  led  to  follow 
divergent  paths  with  only  occasional  and  half-con- 
cealed communications  between  them.  While  at  first 
this  new  relation  seemed  to  take  the  psychologist  into 
fields  far  removed  from  his  specialty,  the  frequent 
discoveries  of  psychologically  important  facts  in  unex- 
pected quarters  of  this  domain  have  deepened  his  in- 
terest in  the  labors  of  his  brother  scientists.  The 


A  SPE  CTS  OF  MODERN  PS  YCU  OL  O  GY.      7  3 

modern  problem,  to  the  elaboration  of  which  Germany 
has  so  largely  contributed,  is  the  detailed  investigation 
of  the  functional  nexus  between  portions  of  the  nervous 
system  and  the  complex  of  activities  that  constitute 
life.  This  problem  becomes  most  interesting  as  well 
as  most  difficult  in  relation  to  the  nervous  system  of 
man.  At  first  the  methods  of  gross  anatomy  and  finer 
dissection  revealed  all  that  was  known  of  the  nervous 
system,  but  with  the  marvellously  increased  powers 
furnished  by  the  microscope  and  the  accompanying 
technique  of  section-cutting,  hardening,  and  staining, 
with,  too,  the  utilization  of  pathological  conditions  and 
of  embryological  formations,  for  studying  normal  rela- 
tions, our  notions  of  the  wonderful  complexity  of  the 
nervous  system  has  been  enlarged  beyond  all  expecta- 
tion and  the  range  of  physiological  problems  propor- 
tionately extended.* 

It  would  carry  us  too  far  into  details  were  we  to 
attempt  a  resume  of  the  current  facts  and  conceptions 

*The  chief  anatomical  methods  of  to-day  are  :  (i)  The  methods  of  coarse 
dissection  and  fibering  ;  (2)  Section  cutting  and  a  variety  of  stainings  to  bring 
out  and  differentiate  the  different  elements  of  nervous  tissue  (the  first  section 
was  cut  by  Stilling,  in  1842)  ;  (3)  The  method  of  studying  the  progress  of  de- 
generation in  nerves  when  cut  at  various  points,  introduced  about  1850,  and 
soon  followed  by  (4)  The  application  of  the  same  principle  to  the  effect  of 
disease  in  man  ;  (5)  Gudden's  method  of  extirpating  a  peripheral  or  central 
portion  of  the  nervous  system  in  a  young  animal  and  observing  what  parts  fail 
to  develop,  with  (6)  The  application  of  this  to  abnormal  conditions  in  man, 
e.  g.,  when  a  man  is  born  without  arms  and  the  ganglion  cells  of  the  cervical 
enlargement  are  found  shrunken  or  absent ;  (7)  The  study  of  the  embryolog- 
ical appearances,  it  being  found  that  the  several  fibre-systems  appear  and  are 
enclosed  in  their  medullary  sheaths  (rendering  them  capable  of  functioning) 
at  different  periods,  and  thus  making  possible  an  analysis  extremely  difficult 
in  the  adult  (Flechsig,  1872,  on)  ;  and  (9)  The  method  of  comparative  anatomy, 
i.  e.,  noting  the  relative  development  of  parts  in  differently  endowed  types  of 
animals.  For  a  concise  statement  of  results  in  this  field  see  Edinger,  "  Zehn 
Vorlesungen  fiber  den  Bait  der  Nervosen  Central-Organs,"  1885.  Or  more  fully 
and  recently  Obersteiner,  Anleitung  bei  Studiunt  des  Baues  dcr  Nervosen  Cen- 
tral-Organe,  1888.  Special  works  are  by  Flechsig,  Meynert  (Translated), 
Von  Gudden.  Diagrammatic  schemes  are  given  by  Flechsig,  Aeby,  and 
Rohon. 


74       EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

respecting  the  structure  and  function  of  the  nerve- 
cell  (the  nucleus  of  which  is  now  believed  to  be  the 
origin  of  its  growth,  shrinking  when  the  cell  is  over- 
stimulated,  paling  away  when  the  function  is  lost  and 
containing  within  itself  the  ultimate  elements  of  the 
forces  of  heredity)  ;  the  growth,  functioning,  and  decay 
of  nerve- fibres  ;  the  demonstration  by  a  variety  of 
mutually  corroborative  methods  of  the  columns  of 
fibres  in  the  spinal  cord,  to  which,  generally  speaking, 
the  various  sensory  nerves  contribute  as  they  ascend 
posteriorly,  and  from  which  the  motor  nerves  emerge 
anteriorly  ;  the  reflex-centres  of  the  gray  matter  of  the 
cord,  the  properties  of  which,  though  mechanical,  are 
so  purposive  in  their  nature  as  to  lead  some  physiolo- 
gists to  speak  of  a  "spinal-cord  soul"  and  which 
though  in  a  measure  independent  of  the  higher  cen- 
tres serve  a  most  delicate  and  valued  index  of  the  ef- 
ficiency of  the  whole  organism  ;  the  centres  of  the 
medulla  oblongata  that  regulate  for  us  the  functions  of 
mere  living  and  so  leave  our  brains  free  to  make  life 
worth  living  ;  the  complex  system  of  centres  lying  near 
the  base  of  the  brain  and  collectively  known  as  the 
basal  ganglia,  that  may  be  regarded  as  an  efficient 
force  of  clerks  registering  and  controlling  that  large 
class  of  more  or  less  habitual  actions,  that  no  longer 
need  our  voluntary  and  conscious  attention  and  so 
have  been  handed  over  to  our  automata  ;  the  centres 
of  the  cerebellum  specially  related  to  the  process  of 
locomotion  ;  and  supreme  in  the  hierarchy  of  nervous 
centres,  the  crowning  centralizing  power,  the  cortex 
of  the  cerebrum  where  lie,  "  half  -concealed  and  half- 
revealed,"  the  mysterious  properties  by  virtue  of  which 
an  impression  is  followed  by  an  expression,  the  subject 
comes  into  relation  with  the  object,  and  knowledge 


ASPECTS  OF  MODERN  J'SYCJ/OLOGY.      75 

and  development  become  possible.*  It  would  carry 
us  still  further  into  details  to  trace  the  connections  be- 
tween these  various  centres  :  the  fibres  of  the  corpus 
callosum  that  bind  the  two  hemispheres  of  the  brain 
together  and  perhaps  prevent  the  dissolution  of  per- 
sonality that  seems  to  be  a  favorite  fancy  of  imagina- 
tive writers  ;  the  complication  of  relations  introduced 
by  the  duplication  of  parts  in  the  two  halves  of  the 
body,  and  furthermore  by  the  decussation  of  the  fibres 
in  their  course  from  end-organ  to  brain,  so  that  the 
right  brain  feels  the  pinoh  in  the  left  hand,  and  the 
race  is  largely  right-handed  because  it  is  left-brained  ; 
the  fibres  of  the  corona  radiata  spreading  in  all  direc- 
tions from  the  basal  ganglia  and  lower  centres  to  the 
cortex  of  the  brain  ;  the  associative  fibres  uniting  dif- 
ferent centres  of  the  same  hemisphere  as  well  as  neigh- 
boring convolutions  with  one  another.  All  these  have 
passed  from  the  stage  in  which  they  were  personal  -or 
national  contributions  and  have  become  part  of  the 
common  knowledge  of  mankind. 

The  results  just  enumerated  were  elaborated  by 
physiologists  and  as  furthering  the  progress  of  their 
own  science  ;  their  psychological  importance  being 

*  These  researches  lead  up  to,  and  centre  in,  the  localization  of  function 
in  the  cortex  of  the  brain  upon  which  so  many  scholars  have  concentrated 
their  efforts,  and  which  promises  to  form  a  permanent  landmark  in  the  history 
of  physiology.  The  researches  take  their  origin  in  the  discovery  of  the  elec- 
trical excitability  of  the  cortex  in  1870  by  Fritsch  and  Hitzig,  though  in  part 
connected  with  the  earlier  localization  of  the  motor  speech-centre  (Broca's 
convolution)  by  the  French  physiologists.  The  chief  methods  are  the  method 
of  irritation,  observing  the  movements,  etc.,  followmg  the  stimulation  of  de- 
finite areas  of  the  cortex  ;  the  extirpation  method,  removing  such  areas  and 
noting  the  impairment  of  function  that  follows  ;  the  method  of  pathology  that 
correlates  abnormal  symptoms  with  post-mortem  appearances  besides  the 
physiological  applications  of  the  anatomical  methods  above  indicated.  Very 
much  of  this  work  has  been  done  and  is  going  on  in  Germany,  and  the  princi- 
pal workers  who  have  all  published  extensively  on  the  question  are,  Exner 
(Vienna),  Munk  (Berlin),  Goltz  (Strassburg),  and  others. 


7 6       EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

recognized  by  the  modern  school  of  psychologists. 
We  turn  now  to  the  contributions  of  the  latter  to  the 
foundation  of  their  own  speciality.  The  leader  in  this 
movement  is  Prof.  Wilhelm  Wundt,  of  Leipzig,  who 
in  1879  established  there  the  first  exclusively  psycho- 
logical laboratory.  He,  too,  first  brought  together 
the  scattered  results  in  this  domain  (Physiologische 
Psychologic,  first  edition  1874,  2d  1880,  3d  1887) 
and  effected  the  recognition  of  the  new  science  by  the 
scientific  world  at  large.  For  anything  like  an  ade- 
quate account  of  the  problems  and  results  of  German 
psychological  activity,  one  must  refer  to  Wundt's 
treatise  (closely  followed  by  Ladd  in  his  "Elements 
of  Physiological  Psychology")  and  for  special  studies 
to  the  numbers  of  the  Philosophische  Studien  published 
by  Wundt  since  1882.  It  must  suffice  here  to  indicate 
the  several  lines  of  study  and  the  general  direction  of 
advance. 

What  has  been  said  in  general  under  the  head  of 
experimental  psychology  applies  with  equal  truth  to 
German  psychology  in  particular.  The  study  of  the  psy- 
cho-physic law  both  theoretically  and  experimentally, 
is  essentially  a  German  study.  Besides  the  work  of 
Fechner  himself  and  the  important  contributions  of 
Prof.  Miiller,  of  Gottingen,  Wundt  and  his  pupils 
have  done  much  towards  establishing  to  what  senses 
the  law  applies,  within  what  limits  its  validity  is  con- 
fined, what  factors  contribute  to,  or  interfere  with,  its 
applicability,  what  methods  and  precautions  must  be 
used  in  testing  it.  It  is  impossible  to  express  in  a  few 
words  the  present  condition  of  the  study,  though  I 
may  venture  the  statement  that  the  law  seems  to  hold 
approximately  for  sensations  within  the  ordinary  range 
of  intensity — and  for  sensations  yielding  information 


A  SPE  CTS  OF  MODERN  PS  YCHOL  OGY.      77 

sufficiently  definite  and  yet  not  definite  enough  to  be 
apperceived  as  quantitatively  composed. 

The  measurement  of  the  time  taken  up  by  mental 
processes  has  been  the  favorite  study  in  Wundt's  labo- 
ratory for  several  years.  The  results  have  taught  us 
how  long  it  takes  to  signal  that  we  have  perceived  a 
sight,  a  sound,  or  a  touch ;  how  long  to  recognize  the 
character  of  a  sensation,  say,  that  a  color  is  blue  or  a 
tone  high ;  how  long  to  make  similar  distinctions  with 
letters,  with  sounds,  and  how  this  time  increases  as 
there  are  more  and  more  impressions  amongst  which 
a  distinction  is  to  be  made  ;  how  long  it  takes  to  will 
to  move  our  right  hand  or  our  left,  and  how  much 
longer  to  move  a  given  one  of  the  ten  fingers  ;  how 
long  for  one  idea  to  call  up  another  and  how  much 
longer  when  the  nature  of  the  association  is  limited, 
e.  g.,  when  the  relation  between  the  words  must  be 
that  of  whole  to  part  ]  how  long  to  name  a  letter,  or  a 
picture ;  how  long  to  translate  a  word  or  name  an  ob- 
ject in  a  foreign  language  ;  how  long  to  form  a  simple 
judgment ;  to  perform  an  easy  numerical  calculation 
or  recall  an  item  of  information.  Not  the  time-measure- 
ments merely,  but  the  theories  of  mental  acquisition 
that  the  results  favor  and  the  influences  that  vary  the 
results  have  been  carefully  studied.  The  nature  and 
intensity  of  the  impression,  the  preparedness  of  the 
subject,  the  fore  knowledge  of  the  nature  of  the  stim- 
ulus, and  the  direction  of  the  attention,  whether  upon 
the  sensation  or  upon  the  movement, — are  all  import- 
ant factors.  Mental  weariness,  sensory  fatigue,  ir- 
regular and  unexpected  impressions  usually  lengthen 
the  process,  while  the  action  of  drugs  and  semi-morbid 
conditions  show  another  class  of  influences.  The  in- 
dividual variations  or  '  personal  equation '  of  the  as- 


78       EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

tronomers,  with  whom  indeed  this  study  originated,  also 
affects  the  result ;  the  general  law  being  that  the  more 
complex  the  operation  the  greater  are  the  differences 
in  the  times  that  it  takes  different  persons  to  perform 
it.  Again,  the  curve  of  practice  has  been  experimen- 
tally derived,  and  the  gradual  shortening  of  the  time  in 
school-children,  as  they  advance  from  class  to  class, 
and  conversely  the  extreme  lengths  of  these  times  in 
the  dull  and  weak-minded  suggest  the  practical  im- 
portance of  such  studies.  Nor  is  the  field  limited  to 
these  more  elementary  processes  ;  as  the  results  them- 
selves indicate  a  valid  analysis  of  the  processes  of  cog- 
nition, the  researches  are  being  pushed  further  on  into 
the  study  of  the  higher  faculties.  We  already  have 
a  valuable  experimental  study  of  memory  by  Dr.  Eb- 
binghaus,  and  an  ingenious  investigation  of  complex 
associations  and  judgments  by  Dr.  Miinsterberg. 
Here  too  the  study  of  the  time  is  necessarily  com- 
bined with  a  study  of  the  nature  of  the  mental  opera- 
tion in  question.  It  may  not  be  too  venturesome  to 
predict  that  the  laws  of  association  for  which  so  many 
philosophers  have  earnestly  striven,  can  only  be  ad- 
equately established  on  the  basis  of  such  experimental 
methods,  and  that  these  alone  can  bring  about  a  cor- 
rect appreciation  of  the  laws  of  memory,  that  will  make 
impossible  the  recent  phenomenal  success  of  a  pseudo- 
psychological  adventurer. 

There  remains  the  consideration  of  the  study  of 
the  senses  in  other  aspects  than  those  treated,  not  to 
speak  of  the  variety  of  miscellaneous  problems  grad- 
ually entering  the  domain  of  experimental  psychology. 
The  problems  are  here  so  many  and  so  various  as  to 
make  even  a  bare  mention  of  them  exceed  the  space 
at  my  disposal.  As  problems  central  in  the  interests 


ASPECTS  OF  MODERN  PSYCHOLOGY.     79 

of  German  psychologists  may  be  mentioned  the  re- 
searches growing  out  of  the  discovery  of  Weber,  that 
there  is  for  each  part  of  the  skin  a  limit  at  which  the 
points  of  a  pair  of  compasses  will  be  perceived  as  two. 
On  the  forefinger  two  points  separated  by  one-twentieth 
of  an  inch  seem  as  one  point,  on  the  back  of  the  neck 
they  may  be  separated  by  over  an  inch  and  still  seem 
as  one.  The  theory  of  "sensory  circles"  has  been 
devised  to  explain  these  facts.  But  the  survey  of  the 
field  is  too  incomplete  to  warrant  the  acceptance  of 
any  theory  as  final.  The  study  of  dermal  sensibility 
has  been  enriched  by  the  discovery  of  the  'hot'  and 
'cold  points,'  or  areas  in  which  a  body  of  neutral  tem- 
perature gives  rise  to  distinct  sensations  of  heat  and 
cold;  the  possibility  of  pressure-points  has  also  been 
indicated.  The  nature  of  the  muscular-sense  with  the 
discussion  of  the  '  innervation  theory '  is  another 
closely  allied  department  of  research.  A  second  im- 
portant group  of  problems  deals  with  the  analysis  of 
musical  sensations  to  which  Helmholz  has  contributed 
so  largely ;  it  may  be  sufficient  to  mention  the  work  of 
Prof.  Stumpf,  the  Halle  psychologist,  (now  appearing 
in  several  volumes,)  as  an  evidence  of  the  continued 
interest  in  this  field.  As  a  third  central  point  may  be 
mentioned  the  psychology  of  vision.  Although  much 
attention  has  been  given  to  other  problems,  the  main 
interest  has  been  in  those  that  contribute  evidence 
bearing  upon  the  theory  of  color  vision,  Helmholz  and 
Hering  being  the  recognized  leaders  of  the  two  views, 
and  upon  the  great  controversy  between  nativists  and 
empiricists  upon  the  perception  of  space.  In  connec- 
tion with  these,  however,  a  large  number  of  subsidiary 
points  have  been  investigated.  The  sensitiveness  of 
the  retina  in  its  different  portions  to  form,  color,  and 


8o       EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

motion ;  the  estimation  of  size  and  distance  ;  the  per- 
ception of  solidity  as  illustrated  by  that  truly  psycho- 
logical instrument,  the  stereoscope;  the  relations  of 
sight  and  touch  and  the  coordination  of  sensory  with 
motor  visual  factors,  are  some  of  the  dominant  lines  of 
interest  in  psycho-physiological  optics. 

While  these  are  the  departments  of  psychology 
specially  cultivated  in  Germany,  it  can  be  fairly  said 
thatthere  is  no  promising  line  of  investigation  to  which 
the  Germans  have  not  contributed.  Prof.  Preyer  has 
written  the  most  comprehensive  treatise  on  child-de- 
velopment ;  we  have  many  valuable  German  studies 
of  animal  psychology  both  experimental  and  theoret- 
ical ;  Prof.  Bastian,  of  Berlin,  is  an  acknowledged 
leader  of  the  psychological  anthropologists;  while  in 
morbid  psychology  we  have  the  most  excellent  con- 
tributions of  Krafft- Ebbing,  (Vienna,)  and  Emming- 
haus,  (Freiburg,)  of  Kussmaul,  (Strassburg,)  and 
Wildbrand,  (Hamburg).  The  phenomena  of  hypno- 
tism are  attracting  the  attention  of  German  psychol- 
ogists with  renewed  interest,  and  they  have  intro- 
duced into  this  study  a  valuable  critical  element.  And 
finally  the  application  of  psychology  to  the  German 
specialty,  education,  has  resulted  in  the  science  of 
pedagogical  psychology. 

Before  leaving  the  topic  of  German  psychology,  it 
may  be  worth  while  to  survey  the  local  centres  of  in- 
terest to  obtain  the  basis  for  an  outlook  upon  the  future. 
The  physiological,  the  anthropological,  the  compara- 
tive and  morbid  aspects  of  psychology  have  a  sufficient 
guarantee  of  vitality  in  their  growing  practical  im- 
portance, and  in  the  various  classes  of  specialists 
whose  interests  they  command.  It  is  rather  for  ex- 
perimental psychology,  as  creating  new  renlms  and 


A  SPE  CTS  OF  MODERN  PS  YCHOL  O  G  Y.     8 1 

methods  of  investigation  and  in  part  running'  counter 
to  the  traditional  psychology,  that  special  provision 
must  be  made.  The  influence  of  the  psychological 
laboratory  at  Leipzic  is  spreading,  and  the  foreign 
students  studying  there  have,  in  several  cases,  suc- 
ceeded in  introducing  similar  innovations  in  their  own 
countries.  Prof.  G.  E.  Miiller,  of  Gottingen,  has  estab- 
lished a  laboratory  at  that  university,  and  Dr.  Ebbing- 
haus  has  done  the  same  at  Berlin.  Dr.  Miinsterberg 
of  the  University  of  Freiburg  deserves  great  credit  for 
the  laboratory  which  he  privately  maintains  there. 
Similar  plans  are  under  consideration  for  the  universi- 
ties of  Bonn,  of  Breslau,  of  Prague,  and  doubtless 
elsewhere.  Psychological  societies  have  been  formed, 
though  the  most  prominent  of  these  the  Gesellschaft 
fur  Experimental-Psychologic,  of  Berlin  and  of  Mun- 
ich, devote  their  efforts  mainly  to  the  problems  of 
"Psychic  Research."  The  many  literary  contribu- 
tions both  as  special  studies  and  as  periodical  essays 
testify  to  the  rapid  progress  of  psychology  in  all  parts 
of  Germany.  A  serious  obstacle  to  the  growth  of  the 
department  has  been  the  difficulty  of  obtaining  pecu- 
niary aid  from  the  State ;  this  difficulty  being  increased 
by  the  isolation  of  the  several  parts  of  a  German  uni- 
versity, that  prevents  an  easy  affiliation  of  the  psycho- 
logical laboratory  to  the  kindred  departments  of  physi- 
ology or  physics.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that  as 
the  special  needs  of  experimental  psychology  are  more 
distinctly  appreciated,  these  hindrances  to  its  free  de- 
velopment will  be  gradually  removed.* 

*  For  further  information  concerning  German  psychology  I  can  only  refer 
in  English  to  Ribot's  "  German  Psychology  of  To-day,"  (by  no  means  as  good 
a  compilation  as  his  other  works,)  and  to  articles  by  Prof.  Hall  and  by  Dr. 
Cattell,  published  in  Mind.  There  are  very  few  general  articles  or  treatises 
on  the  aims  and  methods  of  the  new  psychology  in  any  language  ;  in  German 
one  may  consult  a  few  of  Wundt's  "  Essays,"  and  a  lecture  by  Dr.  Gotz  Mar- 
tius,  Ueber  die  Ziele  itnd  Ergebnisse  der  Experimentellen  Psychologie,  1888. 


Sa        EPITOMES  OF  T PI  REE  SCIENCES. 


ii. 
PSYCHOLOGY  IN  FRANCE  AND  ITALY. 


IN  France  and  Italy  psychology  though  pursued 
with  great  energy  and  devotion  may  be  said  to  be  an 
avocation  rather  than  a  vocation.  While  we  find 
everywhere  important  contributions  to  psychology  from 
representatives  of  other  sciences,  this  is  particularly 
true  of  France  and  Italy.  The  chief  upholders  of 
scientific  psychology  in  these  countries  are  alienists, 
physiologists,  and  anthropologists,  together  with  gen- 
eral physicians,  sociologists,  philosophers,  and  littera- 
teurs. Oi  these  the  alienists  are  sufficiently  numerous 
to  warrant  the  selection  of  a  department  of  morbid 
psychology  as  most  representative  of  French  and 
Italian  activity.  The  great  medical  schools  and  hos- 
pitals of  Paris  together  with  the  naturally  volatile  and 
nervous  French  temperament  have  been  important 
factors  in  this  development.  The  portions  of  psycho- 
pathology  specially  prominent  in  French  psychology 
are  the  diseases  of  the  nervous  system,  the  various 
forms  of  mania,  of  idiocy  and  epilepsy,  of  hysteria  and 
melancholia,  all  of  which  branch  out  into  obscure  and 
subtle  mental  defects,  hallucinations,  delusions,  anaes- 
thesias, perverted  sensations,  abnormal  emotions, 
changes  of  personality,  and  the  like.  It  is  in  the  care- 
ful description  of  these  outlying  and  rarer  forms  of 
mental  impairment  that  the  French  alienists  have  been 


ASPECTS  OF  MODERN  PSYCHOLOGY.      S3 

prominent.  Hysteria  and  hystero-epilepsy,  nowhere  so 
common  as  in  France,  present  to  the  psychologist  the 
most  protean  aspects,  at  times  seeming  to  reveal  hid- 
den forms  of  working  of  the  nervous  centres,  and  again 
presenting  a  mere  bizarre  and  capricious  picture  from 
which  no  generally  valid  inferences  can  be  drawn. 
More  particularly,  the  genesis  of  illusions  and  halluci- 
nations; their  explanation  as  attempts  more  or  less 
unconsciously  elaborated  by  the  patient  to  account  for 
abnormal  sensations  ;  the  diseases  of  language  furnish- 
ing the  most  valid  analysis  of  the  several  elements  of 
the  process  ;  the  diseases  of  the  will  showing  the  various 
stages  of  muscular  inertia  up  to  complete  psychical 
paralysis;  the  many  forms  of  the  diseases  of  memory 
revealing  the  relative  inter-dependence  of  various 
portions  of  the  mental  domain ;  the  diseases  of  per- 
sonality showing  how  gradual  and  subtle  are  the  pro- 
cesses by  which  that  most  realistic  of  feelings  the  con- 
sciousness of  being  oneself  is  destroyed, — all  these 
together  with  their  many  species  and  varieties  form  a 
most  attractive  chapter  of  French  psychology.  Out 
of  this  region  there  has  emerged  within  the  last  dec- 
ade a  study  now  claiming  the  attention  of  every  psy- 
chologist in  France,  and  to  which  must  undoubtedly  be 
allowed  the  distinction  of  ranking  as  the  French  psy- 
chological specialty — Hypnotism.  As  though  to  atone 
for  the  psychic  epidemic  introduced  by  Mesmer  as 
well  as  for  the  varied  and  pernicious  consequences 
that  followed  in  its  train,  the  French  have  rescued  the 
field  of  activity  most  closely  associated  with  his  name 
from  the  odium  attaching  thereto  and  have  elevated 
it  to  the  recognized  science  of  Hypnotism.  Not  taking 
into  account  the  very  important  works  of  James  Braid 
in  England,  and  of  Dr.  Esdaile  in  India,  we  may  date 


84       EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

the  beginning  of  the  scientific  era  in  the  study  of  hyp- 
notism from  the  taking  up  of  the  study,  little  more 
than  a  decade  ago,  by  Dr.  Charcot  and  his  associates 
of  the  Salpctricrc,  though  in  so  doing  we  neglect  the 
thoroughly  excellent  and  independent  work  of  Dr. 
Liebault,  at  Nancy,  and  a  few  others. 

Owing  to  the  incredulity  regarding  all  'mesmeric' 
phenomena  induced  by  the  frequent  claims  to  super- 
normal powers  on  the  part  of  operator,  subject,  or 
agency,  and  their  equally  frequent  failures  to  substan- 
tiate their  claims,  it  became  necessary  to  demonstrate 
the  genuineness  of  the  phenomena,  and  to  affiliate 
them  to  our  knowledge  of  the  nervous  system  and  its 
functions.  Braid  had  already  done  much  by  showing 
that  the  method  of  hypnotization  and  the  personality 
of  the  operator  were  entirely  insignificant  factors,  and 
indeed  this  conclusion  had  been  reached  by  the  first 
commission  appointed  by  the  French  Academy  of 
Sciences,  on  which  served  Lavoisier,  Bailly,  and  Ben- 
jamin Franklin.  By  applying  rigid  physiological 
tests,  such  as  the  execution  of  normally  impossible 
movements  or  the  equally  abnormal  prevention  of  re- 
flexes ;  such  as  exalted  conditions  of  sensibility  as  well 
as  of  insensitiveness  to  normally  unbearable  pain, — 
the  reality  of  the  condition  was  placed  upon  a  sure 
footing.  As  it  would  be  impossible  here  to  record 
the  several  stages  in  the  unparalleled  progress  of  the 
study  it  may  be  most  serviceable  to  present  the  two 
important  views  of  hypnotism  now  maintained  in 
France  and  the  chief  lines  of  study  now  cultivated. 

The  school  of  Charcot  recognize  certain  physical 
agencies  as  characteristic  in  the  production  of  the  phe- 
nomena and  certain  physiological  agencies  as  equally 
characteristic  of  the  hypnotic  stages  themselves  and  as 


A  SPE  CTS  OF  MOD  ERN  PS  YC  'JfOL  O  C  Y.      8  5 

furnishing  the  means  of  distinction  between  them. 
The  school  of  Nancy,  represented  by  Bernhijim,  re- 
gard all  the  phenomena  and  the  modes  of  producing 
them  as  purely  psychological  in  origin,  and  see  in 
the  term  "  suggestion  "  the  key  to  them  all.  The  for- 
mer distinguish  three  stages,  the  cataleptic,  the  lethar- 
gic, and  the  somnambulic,  characterized  by  unnatural 
immobility,  by  neuro-muscular  excitability,  etc.  ;  the 
transition  from  one  to  the  other  proceeding  by  opening 
or  closing  of  the  eyelid,  pressure  upon  sensitive  re- 
gions, and  so  on.  The  latter  distinguish  only  different 
degrees  of  hypnotization,  characterized  by  mental  dif- 
ferences such  as  consciousness  of  surroundings,  re, 
membrance  of  what  is  done  in  the  hypnotic  state  and 
the  like,  and  depending  upon  individual  differences  of 
susceptibility  and  training.  It  should  be  said  that  this 
latter  view  is  rapidly  gaining  ground,  being  the  one 
upheld  by  the  chief  writers  on  hypnotism  in  Germany 
and  Switzerland,  in  Italy,  Belgium  and  elsewhere. 
Accordingly  the  selection  of  points  for  exposition  here 
will  be  made  from  this  latter  standpoint.  Regarding, 
first,  the  nature  of  the  state,  it  is  likened  to  a  natural 
sleep,  in  which  communication  with  the  outside  world 
is  possible  through  the  operator.  The  higher  con- 
trolling powers  are  put  out  of  play,  and  the  subject  be- 
comes an  automaton  at  the  mercy  of  the  suggestions 
made  to  him.  These  suggestions  are  unlimited  in  vz* 
riety  and  no  matter  how  absurd  or  abnormal,  will  be 
obeyed  by  facile  subjects.  One  may  take  away  sen- 
sibility to  touch,  to  sight,  or  any  particular  visual  image, 
say,  of  an  individual,  of  all  objects  of  a  certain  color 
and  so  on.  One  may  effect  an  unusual  sensibility 
such  as  reading  within  a  few  millimetres  of  the  eye, 
and  directly  or  indirectly  hyperaesthesia  of  almost 


86       EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

every  sense  has  been  observed.  One  may  obliterate 
the  memory  of  a  class  of  events,  a  period  of  life,  or  of 
a  particular  occurrence  ;  one  may  induce  the  subject 
to  accept  as  reality  what  is  purely  imaginary  ;  one  may 
induce  changes  of  personality  ;  place  the  subject  in 
imaginary  relations  and  see  him  act  out  the  part  to 
the  best  of  his  capacity ;  in  brief  there  is  hardly  a  phase 
of  muscular,  sensor}7,  or  psychic  activity  that  cannot 
be  modified  in  a  variety  of  ways  by  suitable  sugges- 
tions. 

From  the  many  important  facts  to  be  revealed  by 
a  careful  analysis  of  these  phenomena  in  relation  to 
the  condition  of  mind  and  body  that  give  rise  to  them, 
I  will  select  the  following  four  as  typical  and  instruc- 
tive: 

1.  The  extreme  infliience  of  the  mind  over  the  body 
is  nowhere  more  clearly  shown.      Not  only  the  use  of 
hypnotism   for  curative   purposes   that  furnishes  the 
kernel  of  truth  in  the  faith-cure  movements,   but  the 
demonstrated  possibility  of  changing  the  heart-beat, 
the  temperature,  of  producing  bleedings  and   healing 
sores,  under  the  obedience  to  suggestions,  reveal  the 
vast  reserve  of  energy  that  in  this  unusual  condition  is 
at  the  disposal  of  the   mind.     What  must  otherwise 
be  rare  and  complex  observations  are  here  reduced  to 
rigid  and  definite  experiments. 

2.  In  the  post-hypnotic  suggestion  we  have  a  sug- 
gestion impressed  during  hypnosis  but  executed  dur- 
ing the  normal  waking  condition.      In   so   doing   the 
subject  usually  accepts  the  act  as  of  his  own  doing, 
giving  reasons  for  it  and  repudiating  any  implications 
of  the  influence  of  the  suggester.     At  times  the  act  is 
done  automatically,   the  subject  not  remembering  at 
all  that  he  did  it  though  otherwise  fully  awake  and  con- 


ASPECTS  OF  MODERN  /'.V KC '/fOLOC  ) .      Sy 

scious.  We  have  thus  revealed  different  strata  of  con- 
sciousness as  it  were,  showing  that  this,  as  well  as  un- 
consciousness, is  a  matter  of  degree,  and  suggesting, 
too,  that  a  large  realm  of  mental  phenomena  now  baf- 
fling explanation  could  be  brought  into  order  were  we 
more  intimately  acquainted  with  these  subconscious 
strata.  Perhaps,  too,  we  have  here  an  experimental 
proof  of  the  dictum  of  Spinoza,  that  the  feeling  of  free 
will  arises  from  the  ignorance  of  the  motives  of  our 
actions. 

3.  Nothing  better  illustrates  the   kind  of  analysis 
that  hypnotism  furnishes  than  the    "  negative  halluci- 
nations."    These  consist   in  rendering  imperceptible 
to  the  senses  an  object  really  present.     If   it    is   sug- 
gested that  one  of  the  company  has  gone  away,  he  may 
now  speak  to  the  patient,  pinch  him,  stand  in  his  way 
without  the  least  effect.     If  he  places  a  hat  upon  his 
head   the  subject  sees  it  mysteriously  suspended  in 
mid-air,  and  so  on.     Or   again,    if  the  suggestion  be 
given  that  the  subject  cannot  read  the  word  "not"  he 
will  read  whole  pages  correctly  always  omitting  that 
word.     To   do  this   he  must  really  see  the  word  in 
order  to  recognize  that  it  is  the  word  not  to  be  read, 
and  yet  he  does  not  see  it.     It  is  a  condition  similar 
to    "psychic   blindness,"    and   again   illustrates  how 
hypnotism    substitutes    experiment   for   observation. 
The  eye  sees  but  the  brain  has  a  constant  order  that 
when  such  and  such  an  impression  knocks  for  admis- 
sion, it  should  not  be  received. 

4.  The  analogies  of  hypnotism  to  more  normal  states 
are  many.    Not  only  in  sleep  but  in  the  waking  condi- 
tion, we  find  susceptible  subjects,   easily  subjugated 
to  the  will  of  another,  credulous,  and  by  reiteration  of 
their  fancies  acquiring  a  firm  belief  in  their  truth  and 


88       EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

perhaps  embellishing  them  with  a  mass  of  interesting 
detail.  Hypnotic  subjects  in  the  waking  condition  often 
accept  and  act  out  suggestions  just  as  if  hypnotized, 
and  such  observations  shed  valuable  light  upon  the 
genesis  of  illusions. 

The  interest  in  hypnotism  is  not  confined  to  the 
description  and  explanation  of  its  varied  appearances, 
but  several  practical  applications  of  it  have  been 
made.  Foremost  is  the  therapeutic  use  of  it  in  the 
treatment  of  disease.  By  systematically  giving  sug- 
gestions that  pains  shall  disappear,  that  abnormal 
processes  shall  cease,  and  diseased  functions  be  re- 
stored, accompanying  such  suggestions  by  rubbing, 
etc.,  to  fix  the  attention  upon  the  part  concerned ;  by 
gradually  moving  members  the  control  over  which  was 
lost,  a  very  considerable  number  of  ailments  have 
been  successfully  treated.  This  means  that  by  apply- 
ing an  admittedly  mysterious  power  of  helping  the 
action  of  nature,  or  by  removing  more  or  less  imagina- 
tive obstacles  to  a  natural  cure,  many,  of  course  not 
all,  forms  of  disease  may  be  alleviated.  Again,  an  edu- 
cational hypnotization  to  the  removal  of  bad  habits  by 
moral  suggestions  has  been  tried. 

Finally,  the  law  has  had  to  deal  with  hypnotism ; 
because  these  suggestions  may  be  for  evil  as  well  as 
for  good,  may  be  abused  as  well  as  utilized.  Not  only 
is  it  possible  to  inflict  injury  upon  a  person  hypnotized, 
or  get  him  to  injure  others ;  to  obtain  his  signature  to 
an  important  paper  ;  but  the  possibility  of  post-hyp- 
notic suggestion  gives  opportunity  for  a  large  number 
of  crimes,  committed  by  persons  apparently  in  normal 
condition  and  fully  accepting  the  responsibility  for 
their  acts.  These  in  the  main  are  the  problems  to 
which  the  French  psychologists  are  devoting  their 


ASPECTS  OF  MODERN  PSYCHOLOGY.     X<j 

energies,  and  to  the  elucidation  of  which  they  have 
largely  contributed.  In  addition  to  the  overwhelming 
and  constantly  increasing  literature  of  hypnotism,  there 
exists  the  Revue  de  r Hypnotisme,  appearing  monthly, 
and  in  August  last  a  very  successful  international  con- 
gress of  hypnotism  was  held  in  Paris. 

Although  the  main  psychological  interests  in  France 
run  in  the  channels  already  outlined,  there  are  a  num- 
ber of  by-streams  that  give  evidences  of  vitality  in 
other  directions.  What  may  be  termed  sociological 
psychology  is  eagerly  cultivated,  in  particular  the  study 
of  the  criminal  classes  as  sociological  defectives  ;  the 
effects  of  heredity  in  preserving  acquired  character- 
istics ;  the  effect  of  the  environment  in  the  process  of 
mental  evolution — have  been  fully  treated.  Again,  those 
general  relations  of  sensation,  of  the  feelings,  of  the 
movements,  represented  for  example  in  the  works  of 
Paulhan,  Beaunis,  F£re,  Binet,  Egger,  and  Ballet, 
have  received  clear  and  interesting  expositions.  In 
comparative  psychology  we  may  cite  the  work  of  Es- 
pinas  on  animal  societies  and  of  Perez  on  the  various 
stages  of  child  development.  The  psychological  labor- 
atory and  distinct  professorships  of  psychology  are 
almost  unknown  in  France.  The  chair  of  experi- 
mental and  comparative  psychology  that  M.  Ribot 
holds  in  the  College  de  France,  is  a  striking  exception. 
By  this  position  as  well  as  by  the  editorship  of  the 
Revue  Philosophique,  a  monthly  periodical,  always  full 
of  interesting  psychological  matter,  M.  Ribot  has 
claims  to  rank  as  the  leader  of  the  modern  psycho- 
logical school  in  France.  His  admirable  compilations 
have  done  much  to  give  unity  to  what  would  otherwise 
be  scattered  results,  and  the  position  he  represents 
shows  that  in  spite  of  its  somewhat  disjointed  char- 


go       EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

acter,  psychology  in  France  is  a  very  active  and  prom- 
ising study.* 

What  is  true  of  France  is  largely  true  of  Italy,  ex- 
cept that  hypnotism  plays  a  less  essential  role.  Mor- 
bid psychology  in  all  its  branches  is  assiduously  cul- 
tivated, and  the  more  important  Italian  journals  of 
psychology  are  largely  under  the  control  of  alienists. 
Sociological  psychology  is  also  very  prominent,  as  is  evi- 
denced by  Morselli's  work  on  "  Suicide, "  and  the  school 
of  psychological  criminologists  headed  by  Lombroso. 
In  his  classic  work,  L'Uorno  Delinquents,  Lombroso  re- 
gards the  criminal  as  a  distinct  biological  variety  of 
the  human  species,  and  collects  with  great  ingenuity 
the  bodily  and  mental  characteristics  by  which  he  can 
be  distinguished  from  more  normal  men.  The  number 
of  psychological  students  in  Italy  is  small,  so  that  the 
dominant  interests  of  individuals  are  important.  One 
should  mention  the  works  of  the  Florentine  anthropo- 
logist Mantegazza,  upon  the  expression  of  the  emo- 
tions, upon  the  physiology  of  love,  and  upon  the  various 
forms  of  ecstasy ;  of  Mosso  on  the  psychology  of  fear  ; 
of  Tamburini  and  Seppili  on  hypnotism ;  of  Lombroso 

*  I  know  of  no  general  account  of  psychology  in  France.  Under  hypnotism 
I  would  select  the  works  of  Bernheim  on  suggestive  therapeutics  (translated), 
of  Binet  and  Frere  on  animal  magnetism  (translated),  of  Liegois  on  the  legal 
aspects  of  hypnotism,  and  of  Janet,  r  Automat  is  me  Psychologique ,  as  represent- 
ing the  typical  phases  of  the  study.  Max  Dessoir  has  published  an  admirable 
bibliography  of  hypnotism  including  over  800  titles.  For  Italy  I  can  refer  to 
La  Philosophic  experimental  en  Italic,  by  Alfred  Espinas.  In  Switzerland  and 
Belgium  the  state  of  psychology  is  similar  to  what  it  is  in  France  and  Italy  ;  as 
the  number  of  psychologists  in  these  countries  is  small,  individual  interests 
are  again  important.  In  Switzerland  may  be  mentioned  Forel,  who  is  pri- 
marily an  alienist,  but  has  written  upon  the  psychology  of  the  ant,  and  has  in- 
troduced the  study  of  hypnotism  into  Switzerland ;  Herzen,  primarily  a  bio- 
logist, who  has  written  upon  the  fundamental  relations  of  body  and  mind,  etc. 
Switzerland  is  also  closely  related  to  Germany,  and  many  of  the  interests  of 
German  psychology  are  also  represented.  In  Belgium  the  name  of  Delboeuf 
is  important.  He  has  written  upon  the  psycho-physic  law,  upon  the  nature  of 
sensation,  and  recently  upon  hypnotism. 


ASPECTS  OF  MODERN  PSYCHOLOGY,     yi 

on  genius  and  insanity  ;  of  Vignoli  on  myth  and  science, 
and  upon  animal  intelligence  ;  and  the  very  admirable 
handbook  of  physiological  psychology  written  by  Sergi, 
Professor  of  Anthropology  at  Rome.  The  Italian  con- 
tributions to  psychology  though  few,  are  of  a  high  order 
and  in  the  intellectual  revival  which  that  country  is 
experiencing,  the  interests  of  psychology  will  surely  be 
furthered. 


92     EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 


PSYCHOLOGY  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN  AND  THE 
UNITED  STATES. 


JT  is  difficult  for  several  reasons  to  describe  justly 
and  briefly  the  status  of  psychology  in  Great  Britain. 
The  mere  enumeration  of  the  more  prominent  authors 
and  their  works  would  hardly  give  much  insight  into 
the  underlying  influences  and  interests  to  which  these 
works  owe  their  origin.  On  the  other  hand  in  singling 
out  certain  phases  of  activity  as  representative,  there 
is  danger  of  slighting  others,  as  well  as  of  giving  to 
British  psychology  an  appearance  of  harmony  and 
unity  that  it  does  not  altogether  possess.  I  shall 
attempt  a  middle  course  between  these  tendencies. 
Again,  we  must  remember  that  the  connection  of  pre- 
sent teachings  with  the  past  has  been  kept  very  vital 
in  English  philosophic  thought,  and  that  the  special- 
ization of  psychology  from  the  other  mental  sciences 
has  not  been  as  marked  as  elsewhere.  The  associa- 
tionist-school  directly  continue  the  present  with  the 
former  philosophical  interests,  and  the  traces  of  this 
parentage  are  evident  in  those  who  have  adopted  new 
methods  and  modern  ideas.  The  names  of  Bain  and 
Sully  at  once  suggest  themselves  ;  both  of  whom  have 
contributed  largely  to  the  maintainance  of  a  healthy 
interest  in  mental  science  and  have  distinctly  advanced 
the  status  of  psychology  in  their  country.  Two  other 
authors  should  be  mentioned  as  eminently  influential 


A SPE CTS  OF  MODERN  /'.V 1  'C 7fO LOG}'.      93 

in  furthering  the  scientific  view  of  the  relations  of  body 
and  mind,  as  well  as  in  disseminating  in  attractive 
shape  sound  views  of  the  minor  forms  of  mental  ab- 
normality,— Carpenter  and  Maudsley.  The  former  has 
given  us  the  most  attractive  exposition  of  the  chief 
phenomena  of  every-day  mental  life,  as  well  as  guided 
into  healthy  channels  the  popular  views  regarding 
hypnotism,  thought-reading,  and  the  borderland  of 
mental  science  ;  while  the  latter  in  his  "Physiology  and 
Pathology  of  Mind  "  offers  an  equally  forcible  treatment 
of  allied  problems.  There  should  be  mentioned,  too, 
as  illustrating  the  same  line  of  activity,  the  work  of 
Dr.  Hack  Tukeupon  the  "  Influence  of  the  Mind  on  the 
Body."  From  a  more  distinctly  pathological  point  of 
view  we  may  cite  the  papers  of  Dr.  Hughlings  Jackson, 
and  of  Dr.  Ireland  (in  his  volume  "The  Blot  upon  the 
Brain  ").  The  psychology  of  Herbert  Spencer  is  too 
well  known  to  need  more  than  a  mention  here.  In- 
dependently of  any  final  verdict  as  to  the  merits  of  the 
general  system  in  which  this  psychology  finds  a  place, 
one  must  attribute  to  the  influence  of  his  works  an 
essential  share  in  the  present  psychological  interests, 
as  well  as  the  general  acceptance  of  facts  and  views, 
that  have  contributed  to  clear  and  rational  modes  of 
thought.  We  could  similarly  pay  tribute  to  other 
English  psychologists,  such  as  Croom  Robertson  and 
Ward,  Romanes  and  Grant  Allen.  But  it  will  better 
answer  the  present  purpose  to  venture  to  trace  the 
underlying  spirit  and  attitude  that  inspire  and  unify 
these  contributions,  even  though  in  so  doing  we  run 
the  risk  of  giving  undue  unity  to  the  position. 

Accordingly  I  should  select,  as  most  representative 
of  British  psychological  activity,  the  study  of  compar- 
ative psychology.  That  much  of  this  activity  is  directly 


94       EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

due  to  the  influence  of  Darwin  can  hardly  be  doubted. 
The  general  deepening  and  widening  of  interests  in 
biological  matters  that  the  introduction  of  the  evolu- 
tionary hypothesis  brought  about,  bore  similar  good 
fruit  in  the  world  of  mental  facts.  Darwin's  own  work 
upon  "The  Expression  of  the  Emotions  in  Men  and 
Animals,"  his  essays  on  instinct,  and  his  study  of  the 
mental  development  of  his  own  child,  together  with 
the  numerous  psychological  observations  with  which 
his  works  abound,  furthered  and  directed  this  interest. 
The  detailed  elaboration  of  the  progressive  scale  of  in- 
telligences from  protozoon  to  man  lias  nowhere  received 
a  more  studious  cultivation  than  in  England.  The 
fullest  and  most  systematic  of  such  expositions  is  that 
given  by  Dr.  G.  J.  Romanes,  an  eminent  personal  dis- 
ciple of  Darwin.  In  the  first  of  his  three  works  "  An- 
imal Intelligence,"  he  has  arranged  and  interpreted  an 
abundant  collection  of  instances  illustrating  the  adap- 
tation of  means  to  ends  at  all  stages  of  the  animal 
scale.  Constantly  utilizing  this  interesting  and  valuable 
store-house  of  facts,  Dr.  Romanes  proceeds  in  his 
second  volume,  "Mental  Evolution  in  Animals,"  to 
trace  the  guiding  principles  that  shall  bring  law  and 
order  into  this  domain.  A  portion  of  the  result  finds 
expression  in  a  scheme  indicating  at  what  levels  of 
intelligence  certain  typical  emotions  and  actions  first 
make  their  appearance,  and  such  traits  are  further 
utilized  to  illustrate  the  correlation  of  mental  with 
bodily  function,  both  being  regarded  as  resulting  from 
favorable  variations  in  the  struggle  for  existence.  In 
the  completing  work  of  the  series,  "Mental  Evolution 
in  Man,"  the  same  derivative  argument  is  applied  to 
the  faculties  of  man,  the  especial  object  being  to  an- 
alyze critically  the  specific  bases  of  human  superiority, 


A  SPE  CTS  OF  MODERN  PS  YCIIOL  O  G  Y.     95 

and  to  show  that  the  step  from  the  highest  stages  of 
animal  to  the  lowest  stages  of  human  development  are 
not  steeper  than  nature  presents  elsewhere.  In  the 
very  painstaking  and  suggestive  elaboration  of  this 
argument,  Dr.  Romanes  has  expounded  general  prin- 
ciples and  proposed  psychological  distinctions  of  fac- 
ulty, both  human  and  animal,  that  have  a  high  value 
independently  of  their  place  in  his  system.  However 
little  we  may  agree  with  the  complete  system  of  Ro- 
manes, and  admitting  that  he  classifies  the  facts  of 
animal  intelligence  rather  more  systematically  than 
nature  offers  them,  we  must  recognize  in  his  work  a 
distinct  advance  upon  anything  that  existed  before, 
and  feel  assured  that  every  future  comparative  psychol- 
ogy will  build  upon  the  foundations  here  laid  down. 
If  others  have  expressed  themselves  less  systematically, 
they  have  none  the  less  been  guided  by  the  same  im- 
pulses and  have  contributed  to  the  same  end.  Sir  John 
Lubbock,  in  his  study  of  "Ants,  Bees,  and  Wasps," 
devotes  his  best  energies  to  ingeniously  testing  the 
powers  of  their  senses,  their  instincts  of  orientation, 
their  modes  of  communication,  their  ways  of  solving 
the  perplexing  problems  that  an  arbritrary  change  in 
their  environment  produces  and  so  on.  The  same  zeal 
in  bringing  a  large  number  of  apparently  disparate 
facts  into  serial  order  dominates  Grant  Allen's  expo- 
sition of  the  growth  and  development  of  the  Color- 
Sense,  as  well  as  his  treatise  upon  the  origins  of  the 
pleasurable  and  painful  effects  of  sensation  and  emo- 
tion,— "Physiological  ^Esthetics. " 

Such  studies  have  an  intimate  relation  with  the  an- 
thropological aspect  of  psychology,  in  which  depart- 
ment English  activity  has  been  eminently  successful. 
Of  this  the  authoritative  works  of  Tylor,  upon  "  Prim- 


96       EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

itive  Culture,"  and  "The  Early  History  of  Mankind," 
and  of  Lubbock,  upon  "Prehistoric  Times,"  are  suffi- 
cient evidences.  Their  admirable  expositions  of  the 
evolution  of  arts  and  customs;  the  varied  career  of 
the  foundations  and  development  of  culture ;  their 
discussion  of  the  beginnings  of  expression  and  com- 
munication, both  pictorial  and  oral ;  their  analyses  of 
the  more  or  less  unconscious  psychological  systems 
that  underlie  the  peculiar  beliefs  and  thought-habits 
of  primitive  peoples ;  and  the  equally  interesting  ten- 
dencies to  a  reversion  towards  such  beliefs,  that  ap- 
pear all  along  the  zig-zag  line  of  advance  in  culture, — 
certainly  no  more  entertaining  chapters  of  mental  de- 
velopment have  been  written. 

In  the  remaining  department  of  comparative  psy- 
chology, "Infant  Psychology,"  the  English  have 
shown  a  deep  interest  though  they  are  represented  by 
few  original  studies.  In  the  closely  allied  field  of  the 
application  of  psychology  to  education,  much  appre- 
ciation has  been  felt  in  Great  Britain,  and  it  may  suf- 
fice to  again  refer  to  the  works  of  Bain  and  Sully. 

The  products  of  a  mind  so  original  as  that  of 
Francis  Galton  could  not  readily  be  classified  in  the 
psychological  activity  of  any  country.  His  studies  of 
"Hereditary  Genius,"  tracing  by  aid  of  painstaking 
methods  the  heredity  of  exceptional  mental  and  phys- 
ical gifts ;  his  similar  study  of  the  effects  of  heredity 
and  environment,  of  nature  and  of  nurture,  upon  the 
production  of  English  men  of  science ;  and  the  more 
general  exposition  of  the  laws  governing  the  distribu- 
tion of  faculty  in  his  latest  work,  "Natural  Inher- 
itance," are  all  deeply  permeated  with  the  evolution- 
ary doctrines  and  form  a  unique  chapter  of  science, 
interesting  no  one  more  deeply  than  the  student  of 


A  SPE  CTS  OF  MODERN  PS )  XHOL  OGY.     97 

scientific  psychology.  Mr.  Galton's  studies  of  the 
strengths  of  the  links  that  hold  together  the  chain  of 
:deas,  of  the  peculiar  associations  of  sounds  with 
colors,  and  the  equally  strange  "number-forms,"  to- 
gether with  his  invention  of  composite  photography 
and  many  other  ingenious  devices  for  measuring  and 
recording  human  faculty,— all  merit  careful  attention 
and  will  be  found  in  his  "Inquiry  into  Human  Fac- 
ulty," and  other  works. 

Although  the  present  sketch  makes  no  attempt  to 
render  a  complete  account  of  British  psychology,  it 
would  be  decidedly  lacking  were  no  mention  made  of 
a  movement  that  at  the  present  moment  contributes 
more  than  any  other  to  the  discussion  of  psycholog- 
ical matters,  and  is  amassing  more  rapidly  than  any 
other  a  vast  and  heterogeneous  literature — I  mean 
the  ' '  Psychic  Research  "  movement.  The  ' '  Society  for 
Psychical  Research"  has  in  the  six  or  seven  years  of  its 
existence  accumulated  a  bewildering  mass  of  material, 
bearing  on  one  phase  or  another  of  the  miscellaneous 
group  of  problems  that  lie  partly  within  and  partly 
upon  the  border-lines  of  science  and  the  mysterious 
borderland  that  some  call  the  supernatural.  One  must 
refer,  though  not  without  misgivings,  to  the  volum- 
inous numbers  of  the  "Proceedings "  of  the  society  and 
to  the  two  volumes  of  the  "  Phantasms  of  the  Living  " 
for  a  more  detailed  account  of  the  movement  and  its 
results.  The  main  interest  has  centered  in  the  possi- 
bility of  the  transference  of  thought  from  mind  to  mind 
apart  from  the  recognized  channels  of  sensation  ;  which 
possibility  the  society  has  accepted  as  proven  and 
termed  "Telepathy."  While  acknowledging  that  the 
observations  contributing  to  this  result  have  brought 
to  light  many  unsuspected  phenomena  of  genuine  psy- 


g8        EPJ  TOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

chological  value,  I  cannot  refrain  from  expressing  my 
conviction  that  this  premature  verdict  of  the  society 
and  especially  the  application  of  this  theory  to  the  ex- 
planation of  the  still  more  dubious  death-bed  presenti- 
ments and  the  like,  will  have  a  deterrent  influence 
upon  the  progress  of  psychology  in  Great  Britain.  The 
work  of  the  society  in  investigating  spiritualistic  phe- 
nomena and  in  studying  the  psychology  of  deception 
deserves  especial  credit.  The  society  has  made  many 
and  interesting  studies  of  Hypnotism  and  has  added 
several  instructive  experiments  to  this  study.  They 
have  also  done  well  in  rescuing  from  oblivion  many 
facts  either  of  psychological  or  anthropological  value 
that  without  such  organized  effort  are  not  apt  to  be 
accessible.  While  the  future  progress  of  the  society 
has  the  good  will  of  all  psychologists,  and  its  "Proceed- 
ings" will  continue  to  be  eagerly  read,  one  must  regret 
the  tendency  of  this  interest  to  withdraw  attention 
from  other  and  more  important  departments  of  psy- 
chological research. 

Turning  from  Great  Britain  to  our  own  country,  I 
find  it  still  more  difficult  to  properly  characterize  the 
status  of  scientific  psychology.  While  in  many  respects 
we  follow  English  traditions,  using  their  text-books, 
and  absorbing  their  literature,  we  diverge  from  them 
in  being  more  eagerly  on  the  alert  for  promising  lines 
of  work  wherever  found,  in  a  readiness  to  introduce 
innovations  whenever  circumstances  will  allow,  and  in 
brief  in  utilizing  the  freedom,  though  not  without 
appreciating  the  disadvantages,  of  intellectual  and 
educational  youthfulness.  On  the  one  hand  the  same 
interests  that  have  been  indicated  as  representative  of 
British  psychology  will  be  moderately  true  of  America. 
Biological  science  is  in  a  very  flourishing  condition  in 


A  SPE  CTS  OF  MODERN  PS  YCHOL  OGY.     99 

this  country,  and  the  interests  in  the  mental  side  of 
life  that  such  study  furthers,  has  been  duly  cultivated. 
We  have,  too,  an  "American  Society  for  Psychical  Re- 
search," studying  the  same  phenomena  as  the  English 
society,  *  that  has  yet  published  comparatively  little,  but 
has  maintained  a  cautious  attitude,  and  brought  to  light 
quite  a  number  of  phenomena  of  high  psychological 
importance.  On  the  other  hand  we  have  found  a  great 
inspiration  in  the  experimental  psychology  of  Germany. 
While  a  very  fair  proportion  of  Wundt's  students  at 
Leipsic  are  Americans,  1  believe  no  Englishman  has 
ever  studied  there.  Amongst  us  the  place  of  leadership 
in  this  field  belongs  to  G.  Stanley  Hall,  formerly  Pro- 
fessor of  psychology  at  the  Johns  Hopkins  University, 
and  now  President  of  Clark  University.  At  the  former 
institution  Prof.  Hall  introduced  the  psychological 
laboratory  and  conducted  a  vigorous  department  of 
scientific  psychology.  Some  of  the  studies  from  this 
laboratory  were  published  in  Mind,  the  English  journal 
of  philosophy  and  psychology,  and  were  continued  in  the 
American  Journal  of  Psychology,  when  that  periodical 
was  inaugurated  by  Prof.  Hall  two  years  ago.  This 
journal  maintains  a  high  standard  of  original  contribu- 
tions, presents  a  survey  of  current  psychological  liter- 
ature such  as  is  not  to  be  found  elsewhere,  and  may 
perhaps  be  regarded  the  most  important  contribution 
to  psychology  from  this  side  of  the  Atlantic.  There 
can  be  little  doubt  that  with  the  advantages  that  Clark 
University  offers,  that  institution  will  soon  form  the 
nucleus  of  psychological  research  in  this  country. 
Prof.  James,  of  Harvard  College,  though  with  some- 
what different  interests,  has  contributed  by  personal 

*  Since  these  words  have  been  written  the  American  Society  has  decided 
to  become  a  branch  of  the  English  Society. 


ioo     EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

influence  as  well  as  by  a  series  of  brilliant  essays  to  the 
furtherance  of  psychological  studies  amongst  us.  More- 
over, there  are  many  indications  that  the  career  of 
scientific  psychology  in  the  United  States  is  full  of 
promise.  Dr.  Cattell,  a  pupil  of  Wundt,  has  organized 
a  department  of  experimental  psychology  in  the  Uni- 
versity of  Pennsylvania,  and  other  institutions  are  look- 
ing forward  to  a  similar  step.  I  may  be  allowed,  too, 
to  mention  the  chair  of  "Experimental  and  Comparative 
Psychology"  at  the  University  of  Wisconsin,  which  I 
now  occupy  and  with  which  is  maintained  a  laboratory 
of  experimental  psychology.  While  thus  we  have 
simply  entered  upon  the  initial  stages  of  our  career,  our 
interests  are  wide  and  well  grounded,  our  foundations 
are  securely  laid,  and  one  may  be  allowed  to  confi- 
dently hope,  if  not  to  predict,  that  amongst  the  ad- 
vances in  Psychology  that  the  future  holds  in  store,  a 
good  share  will  come  from  American  psychologists. 


RISE  OF  THE  PEOPLE  OF  ISRAEL, 


INTRODUCTION. 


MY  DEAR  FRIEND  : — 

You  have  expressed  your  surprise,  that  in  view  of  my  firm 
adherence  to  the  doctrines  of  the  Church  I  could  have  assumed 
in  questions  of  Biblical  research  so  critical  a  standpoint  as  that 
exhibited  in  my  little  essay  upon  the  early  history  of  the  People  of 
Israel ;  and  you  have  declared  that  particularly  for  an  American 
public,  whom  you  wish  to  make  acquainted  with  my  unpretentious 
little  treatise,  would  an  explanation  and  justification  of  this  ap- 
parently contradictory  position  be  of  interest.  I  shall,  accord- 
ingly, briefly  express  my  thoughts  upon  this  subject. 

First,  I  should  like  to  point  out,  that  we  are  here  dealing  with 
the  Old  Testament.  As  surely  as  Jesus  himself  said  of  the  Old 
Testament,  '  Search  the  scriptures  ....  they  are  they  which 
testify  of  me  '  (John  5,  29),  and  just  as  surely  as  Jesus  saw  in 
himself  merely  the  fulfilment  of  that  which  the  Old  Testament 
had  hoped,  believed,  and  prophesied,  so  surely  did  the  Old  Testa- 
ment by  its  fulfilment  in  Jesus  and  through  Jesus  become  a  mere 
preparation,  a  'shadow  of  things  to  come1  (Heb.  10,  i),  so 
surely  did  the  foundation  of  the  new  covenant  make  the  old  cove- 
nant old  (Heb.  8,  13),  and  therefore  the  word  of  the  apostle 
Paul  also  holds  true  with  respect  to  the  relation  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment to  the  New,  that  when  that  which  is  perfect  is  come,  then 
that  which  is  in  part  [imperfect]  shall  be  done  away  (i  Cor. 
13,  10).  The  subject  of  the  faith  of  a  Christian  can  be  the 
life  and  work  of  Jesus  alone,  and  not  the  Old  Testament.  To  de- 
clare the  Old  Testament  also  a  subject  of  faith  for  Christians  is 


io4     EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

equivalent  to  declaring  the  work  of  Jesus  superfluous.  Of  what 
need  were  the  revelation  through  Him  if  the  Old  Testament  al- 
ready contained  a  perfect  revelation  ? 

The  making  of  equal  value  in  all  respects,  and  the  confounding 
of  the  New  Testament  and  the  Old  have  ever  drawn  with  it  retribu- 
tive consequences.  Either  the  Old  Testament  has  been  artificially 
forced  up  to  the  height  occupied  by  the  New,  and  the  attempt  made 
to  find  in  it  all  that  Jesus,  and  Jesus  first,  brought ;  or — and  this  is 
the  more  frequent  and  worser  case — the  New  Testament  has  been 
forced  down  to  the  plane  of  the  Old,  whose  inferior  moral  view- 
point is  more  congenial  to  the  carnal  side  of  human  nature  than 
the  rigider,  higher  demands  of  Jesus.  And  what  this  last  course 
has  led  to,  you  in  America  have,  in  the  life  of  the  Mormon  settle- 
ment, an  example  as  classic  as  it  is  sorrowful.  Out  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment the  Latter-Day  Saints  can  prove  all  their  evil-doing  as  the  re- 
vealed will  of  God. 

If,  now,  in  the  regard  of  the  Christian,  the  Old  Testament 
must  occupy  a  different  position  from  that  of  the  New,  so  also  is  the 
personal  and  scientific  attitude  of  the  Christian,  with  respect  to  the 
two,  a  different  one.  The  New  Testament  is  subject  of  faith,  the 
Old  is  subject  of  criticism.  From  the  standpoint  of  the  New  Tes- 
tament, I  must  most  positively  reject  a  critique  like  that  of  David 
Friedrich  Strauss,  and  most  emphatically  condemn  it :  here  we 
deal  with  subjects  of  faith,  before  which  criticism  must  halt. 

But  am  I  not  speaking  here,  so  far  as  the  Old  Testament  is 
concerned,  in  behalf  of  the  most  boundless  and  devotionless  sub- 
jectivism '  Indeed,  not.  I  demand  complete  freedom  only  for 
scientific  criticism,  and  that  carries  within  itself  its  own  corrective. 
Science  is  a  sovereign  power,  which  proceeds  in  accordance  with 
laws  of  its  own,  yet  which  is  also  unconditionally  bound  to  law  : 
without  law,  without  discipline,  no  true  science  is  conceivable.  But 
to  that  which  has  been  acquired  through  strict  and  methodical 
scientific  research,  we  are  bound  to  bow  unconditionally,  be  it  wel- 
come to  us  or  not ;  confidently  trusting  that  like  every  good  gift  so 


INTR  OD  UCTION.  \  05 

also  science  is  not  a  work  of  the  devil  but  comes  from  God  And 
far  indeed  is  the  regulated  criticism  of  genuine  science  from  in- 
juriously affecting  the  respect  due  to  the  Old  Testament.  On  the 
contrary  it  is  the  true  apology  of  the  Old  Testament.  For  it 
teaches  us  to  understand  and  recognize  as  conditioned  by  time  and 
historical  circumstances  that  which  otherwise  is  obscure  and  often 
actually  repulsive,  and  it  exonerates  us  from  defending  as 
Christian  doctrine  that  in  the  Old  Testament  which  is  purely  and 
specifically  Jewish. 

In  my  own  little  treatise,  indeed,  I  may  call  attention  to  just 
this  apologetical  character — I  might  almost  say  its  eminently  apol- 
ogetical  character.  I  sacrifice,  to  be  sure,  much  of  the  letter  of 
the  tradition.  For  many,  perhaps  too  much.  But  I  preserve  the 
matter  by  that  very  step,  and  explain  much  that  according  to  the 
letter  of  the  tradition  would  be  utterly  unexplainable.  And  the  re- 
sult is  that  we  have  in  the  traditions  of  the  People  of  Israel  respect- 
ing its  early  history,  not  mythology,  not  fantasy,  but  true  history 
for  whosoever  knows  how  to  translate  the  hieroglyphics  of  popular 
tradition  into  the  language  of  history. 

But  are  we  not  concerned  in  all  this  with  a  conflict  between 
faith  and  knowledge  ?  My  opinion  is  that  we  are  not.  According 
to  my  firm  conviction,  no  conflict  whatsoever  can  arise  between 
these  two,  for  the  reason  that  they  have  nothing  in  common,  and 
that  their  respective  provinces  lie  in  two,  totally  different  spheres. 
That  which  I  know,  I  do  not  believe,  and  that  which  I  believe,  I  do 
not  know  in  the  sense  in  which  science  talks  of  knowledge.  I  do 
not  '  believe, '  on  the  contrary  I  '  know '  that  twice  two  is  four,  and 
that  Chicago  is  situated  on  Lake  Michigan  :  on  the  other  hand, 
that  Jesus  redeemed  me — this  I  believe,  and  for  my  own  self  also 
know  it,  and  in  life  and  death  place  my  trust  in  it ;  but  I  do  not 
know  it  in  the  sense  of  knowledge  scientifically  acquired  that  I  can 
prove  to  everybody.  Knowledge  of  the  latter  sort  alone  is  subject 
of  criticism,  and  where  this  kind  of  knowledge  is  concerned  we 
must  bow  unconditionally  before  the  results  of  scientific  criticism. 


io6     EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

Faith,  criticism  cannot  touch  ;  and  where  unbelief — not-faith — ap- 
pears as  the  result  of  criticism,  the  true  faith  in  that  case  has  not 
been  dealt  with,  and  frequently,  too,  true  criticism  has  not  been 
employed.  The  broadest  freedom  must  be  granted  science,  and  I 
am  able  to  discover  in  the  fear  that  scientific  truths  can  harm  or 
overthrow  faith,  evidence  only  of  little  faith.  He  who  said  of  him- 
self '  I  am  the  truth  '  (John  14,  6),  '  For  this  I  came  into  the  world 
that  I  should  bear  witness  unto  the  truth'  (John  18,  37),  and  he 
who  spake  that  great  word  '  And  ye  shall  know  the  truth  and  the 
truth  shall  make  ye  free '  (John  8,  32),  his  work  can  fear  no  truth 
of  whatever  kind  it  may  be.  The  Copernican  system  did  not  de- 
stroy the  Christian  faith,  although  many,  at  that  time,  of  little  faith 
imagined  that  it  was  all  over  forever  with  the  God  of  the  Christians. 
For  it  was  a  truth,  and  Christianity  bore  the  truth.  Foolish  un- 
dertaking that,  in  miscomprehended  apologetic  zeal  to  deny  the 
truths  of  science  as  irreconcilable  with  Christianity  and  to  attempt 
to  destroy  them  !  '  We  can  do  nothing  against  the  truth  '  (2  Cor. 
13,  8),  and  one  is  fain  to  cry  out  to  those  indiscreet  zealots  in  the 
cause  of  God,  the  word  of  Job  :  "  Will  ye  speak  wickedly  for  God  ?  " 
No ;  I  live  in  the  firm  and  implicit  assurance  that  no  truth  of 
science  can  injure  Faith  and  Christianity,  and  believe  that  I 
serve  my  God  when  I  modestly  labor  to  find  in  that  great  monu- 
ment of  the  history  of  Divine  Revelation  on  earth — the  Old  Testa- 
ment— the  truth  that  science  offers  :  hoping  that  this  truth  also  will 
make  free — not  as  though  we  possessed  freedom  as  a  cover  for 
wickedness,  but  like  as  the  servants  of  God,  to  whom,  in  the  words 
of  Saint  Augustine,  Deo  servire  summa  libertas. 

C.  H.  CORNILL, 
Doctor  and  Ordentlicher  Professor  of  Theology 

at  the  University  of  Konigsberg 
February  20,  1890. 


icy 


RISE  OF  THE  PEOPLE  OF  ISRAEL 


BY    PROF.     CARL    HEINRICH    CORNILL. 


ANYONE  wishing  to  speak  upon  the  history  of  the 
people  of  Israel  must  regard  himself  as  particularly 
favored,  from  the  very  nature  of  the  subject  itself.  To 
all  of  us,  Abraham  and  Moses,  Saul  and  David,  and 
the  others  of  whatever  name,  are  like  dear,  old  ac- 
quaintances. These,  in  fact,  are  among  the  first  im- 
pressions which  the  susceptible  minds  of  children  re- 
ceive, and  the  unique  magic  of  religious  poetry  that 
clings  to  these  legends  always  deeply  and  ineffaceably 
impresses  itself  upon  their  youthful  hearts  ;  and  even 
he  who  has  long  since  forgotten  to  look  upon  the  Bi- 
ble with  the  eyes  of  faith,  nevertheless  will  not  be  able 
to  wipe  out  altogether  those  tender  youthful  memories. 

I  may,  accordingly,  anticipate  a  general  interest  in 
and,  at  least  in  its  broad  outlines,  suppose  a  certain 
general  knowledge,  of  the  subject  to  be  treated.  Still, 
on  the  other  hand,  this  knowledge  is  not  so  complete 
that  I  might  not  hope  to  be  able  to  show  those  old  and 
well-known  forms  in  a  new  light,  and  through  the  ac- 
cumulation of  various  details  and  the  revelation  of  a 
grand  historical  inward  connection,  to  work  them  into 
well-colored  and  realistic  historical  pictures. 

Of  truth,  what  an  astonishing  wealth  and  variety 
of  separate  material  is  here  ready  at  hand  !  The  his- 


io8     EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

tory  of  the  people  of  Israel,  in  fact,  shares  with  the 
common  and  many-sided  life  of  humanity,  the  eminent 
quality  of  being  interesting  at  whatever  point  we  may 
touch  it.  We  may  turn  our  attention  to  characters 
more  particularly  belonging  to  political  history  and  we 
shall  behold  a  Saul,  David,  Ahab  ;  or  to  the  heroes  of 
the  soul,  and  we  shall  encounter  Moses,  Samuel,  Elia. 
We  behold  the  ruin  of  the  people  as  a  political  nation 
through  Babylonian  conquest,  and  the  resurrection  of 
the  people  as  a  religious  sect  through  Ezra  and  Nehe- 
miah.  The  ideal,  heroical  figures  of  the  early  Macca- 
bees justly  awaken  our  admiration,  and  even  their  de- 
generate descendants,  during  the  period  of  the  people's 
decadence,  are  themselves  not  altogether  destitute  of 
a  certain  attraction.  The  truculent  grandeur  of  a  King 
Herod,  and  the  appalling  extermination  of  the  nation 
by  the  Roman  sword — the  most  heartrending  catastro- 
phe, perhaps,  that  history  ever  has  witnessed — fitly 
close  this  grand  historical  panorama,  in  which  on  ev- 
ery side  and  at  all  times  we  are  confronted  by  entranc- 
ing phenomena,  arousing  all  our  interest. 

From  out  of  this  superabundant  wealth  of  accumu- 
lated materials  I  shall  select  particularly  the  rise  of 
the  people  of  Israel  and  of  its  national  organization  ; 
and  as  a  legitimate  ground  for  this  preference  of  mine 
I  may  remark,  that  it  accords  perfectly  with  the  predom- 
inant trait  of  our  century  and  of  its  science,  to  inves- 
tigate precisely  the  origins  of  organisms,  and  to  ex- 
plain all  the  most  hidden  processes  in  the  life  and 
action  of  nature  ;  for  the  nations  of  the  earth  may  like- 
wise be  regarded  as  organisms.  Still,  my  principal 
motive  in  choosing  this  part  of  the  subject  was  the 
hope  of  being  able  to  contribute,  regarding  this  very 
epoch,  results  which  are  least  known.  In  fact,  since 


RISE   OF  THE  PEOPLE   OF  ISRAEL.      109 

the  grand  work  of  Heinrich  Ewald,  signalizing  an 
epoch  in  these  researches,  science  has  not  achieved 
more  for  any  era  of  the  history  of  the  people  of  Israel 
than  for  the  history  of  its  primitive  existence.  Our 
present  subject,  accordingly,  expressed  in  popular  lan- 
guage, will  embrace  the  period  from  Abraham  to 
David,  as  related  in  the  five  books  of  Moses  and  in 
those  of  Joshua,  Judges,  and  Samuel. 

The  usual  exposition  is  to  the  effect  that  Abraham 
went  forth  from  the  land  of  Haran  into  Canaan  in  or- 
der to  settle  there.  In  the  fourth  generation  after  him 
his  descendants  migrated  to  Egypt.  In  the  latter 
country  they  led  for  a  long  period  a  quiet  and  peace- 
ful life  until  the  unbearable  oppression  of  the  Egyp- 
tians drove  them  out  of  the  country.  Their  leader, 
Moses,  by  birth  a  Hebrew,  yet  thoroughly  imbued  with 
Egyptian  culture,  led  them  through  the  desert  and 
across  the  peninsula  of  Sinai,  back  to  the  land  of  their 
fathers.  Moses  conquered  the  land  to  the  east  of  the 
Jordan,  Joshua  the  land  to  the  west  of  that  river  ;  the 
latter  exterminated  almost  entirely  the  Canaanite  pop- 
ulation and  allotted  the  land  as  untenanted  posses- 
sions to  the  Israelites.  Thereupon  twelve  judges  in 
succession  wield  the  supreme  power  of  the  people, 
until  finally  the  national  kingdom  arose  in  the  person 
of  the  Benjamite  Saul,  which,  in  the  person  of  his  suc- 
cessor, David,  is  transferred  to  the  house  of  Judah. 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  this  was  the  prevailing 
idea,  as  early  as  the  time  of  the  Babylonian  exile,  when 
the  historical  books  of  the  Old  Testament  were  for  the 
first  time  subjected  to  a  comprehensive  revision  ;  and 
to-day,  in  fact,  the  Books  of  Judges,  Samuel,  and 
Kings  lie  before  us,  upon  the  whole,  in  this  shape. 

This  version   is   a   relatively  recent   one,  having 


no     EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

arisen  at  a  period  when  living  historical  tradition 
no  longer  afforded  information.  The  oldest  written 
sources,  having  by  a  fortunate  chance  been  only  slightly 
digested,  and  thus  preserved  in  all  substantial  features, 
were  incorporated  in  the  great  historical  collection  and 
give  a  widely  different  picture  of  the  earliest  history 
of  the  people  of  Israel. 

At  this  point,  there  arises  the  unavoidable  question 
whether,  generally  speaking,  we  are  permitted  to  re- 
gard these  oldest  traditions  of  the  people  of  Israel  as 
history  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word.  Not  before  the 
exodus  from  Egypt  can  we  speak  in  a  strict  sense  of  a 
history  of  the  people  of  Israel.  All  that  lies  before 
this  point  of  time  may  be  characterized  as  prehistoric 
or  primeval.  Only  in  the  first  Book  of  Moses,  the  book 
of  Genesis,  is  information  to  be  had  of  this  prehistoric 
or  primeval  era. 

Even  regarding  Moses  as  the  author  of  the  five 
books  that  bear  his  name,  yet  concerning  this  remote 
epoch,  separated  from  his  own  by  a  series  of  centu- 
ries, Moses  himself  would  have  had  to  resort  to  oral 
hearsay  and  tradition.  It  was  impossible  for  him  to 
report  these  things  as  an  eye-witness.  But  it  is 
now  generally  conceded  that  Moses  cannot  possibly 
be  the  author  of  the  books  named  after  him.  These 
books  have  rather  originated  from  the  comprehensive 
digestion  of  a  whole  series  of  independent  written 
sources,  of  which  the  oldest  cannot  be  older  than  King 
Solomon,  nor  yet  much  later,  and  written  consequently 
between  900  and  850;  thus  between  them  and  Moses 
there  is  an  interval  of  several  centuries.  Only  a  few 
scattered  sections  in  the  Books  of  Judges  and  Sam- 
uel, and  a  few  poetical  fragments  from  the  five  Books 
of  Moses  might  be  older;  any  comprehensive  and 


RISE  OF  THE  PEOPLE  OF  ISRAEL.      ITI 

coherent  historical  work  earlier  than  900  cannot  be 
proved. 

The  memory  of  the  past,  accordingly,  has  been 
handed  down  substantially  through  the  medium  of  oral 
tradition  ;  the  Israelitic  nation  itself  is  the  author  of 
these  historical  narrations,  to  which  the  biblical  nar- 
rator, in  giving  them  a  permanent  written  form,  has 
only  imparted  a  finer  psychological  character  and  the 
magic  of  his  unsurpassed  art  of  representation.  The 
material  contents,  the  ingredients  of  these  narrations, 
must  be  regarded  from  the  point  of  view  of  popular 
tradition,  of  legend. 

What  is  legend  ?  Its  main  characteristic,  of  course, 
is  popularity.  Legend  is  a  natural  product,  unaffected 
by  tendencies,  an  unconscious  poetry;  and  moreover 
it  is  characteristic  of  legend  that  it  does  not  invent 
its  material  out  that  it  embellishes  extant  tradition 
with  poetic  imagery;  legend,  like  ivy,  winds  itself 
about  cold  matters  of  fact,  often  resistlessly  over- 
powering them  and  flourishing  in  rank  luxuriance,  yet 
not  able  to  thrive  without  them  and  unsupported  by 
them. 

Legend  and  history,  therefore,  are  not  contradic- 
tions, but  advance  together  in  brotherly  harmony;  the 
legend,  from  its  very  nature,  presupposes  an  historical 
substratum.  Only  traditions  that  are  attached  to  some 
definite  locality,  some  definite  monument,  or  name, 
are  to  be  regarded  as  exceptions  to  the  truth  of  these 
remarks ;  traditions  of  the  latter  kind  adhere  ex- 
clusively to  the  locality,  monument,  or  name  that  they 
are  intended  to  explain;  instead  of  an  historical  they 
here  have  a  material  substratum,  and  even  in  these 
instances,  they  still  have  a  substratum;  the  legend 
always  stands  with  firm,  marrowy  frame  upon  solid 


ii2     EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

and  durable  soil,  and  not  with  uncertain  foothold  touch- 
ing the  stars,  a  play  to  wind  and  wave  ;  and  on  this 
ground,  precisely,  we  are,  in  my  opinion,  altogether 
wrong  in  looking  upon  legend  with  an  exaggerated 
skepticism. 

Legend  bears  a  resemblance  to  the  youthful  mem- 
ories of  man.  The  child  will  not  retain  everything, 
but  only  distinct  events,  and  not  always  the  most  im- 
portant ;  but  what  it  does  retain  it  retains  firmly.  And 
above  all  the  child  will  never  be  mistaken  as  to  the 
total  character  of  its  childhood.  A  man  who  has  spent 
a  cheerless  youth  will  never  imagine  that  he  has  been 
a  merry,  happy  child  ;  a  man  who  has  been  raised  in 
a  village  or  among  the  mountains  will  never  believe 
that  he  was  born  in  a  large  city  or  on  the  plain.  The 
youthful  reminiscences  of  nations-must  also  be  judged 
according  to  this  same  analogy.  The  ready-made,  ar- 
tistically complete,  and  finished  shape  that  these  rem- 
iniscences have  assumed  on  the  lips  of  the  people,  or 
of  any  great  poet,  is  to  be  called  legend  and,  as  such, 
the  result  of  unintentional  poetic  creation  ;  but,  on  the 
contrary,  its  historical  substratum  and  the  basic  char- 
acter of  the  whole  must  be  regarded  as  authentic  tra- 
dition. 

It  shall  be  my  endeavor  to  sketch  in  brief  outline 
the  character  of  the  historical  substratum  underlying 
the  oldest  traditions  of  the  people  of  Israel,  and  to 
show  how  upon  this  basis  may  be  erected  the  true 
course  of  the  early  history  of  this  remarkable  people. 

According  to  established  tradition  the  people  of 
Israel  were  not  native  in  the  land  that  afterwards  be- 
came their  home,  but  had  immigrated  from  the  north- 
east of  Mesopotamia ;  a  tradition  which  is  all  the  more 
striking  in  view  of  the  fact  that  the  language  spoken 


RISK   OF  THE  PEOPLE   OJ<   ISRAEL.      113 

by  the  people  of  Israel  could  only  have  originated  in 
Canaan  itself.  This  linguistic  difficulty  was  felt  even 
in  Biblical  times,  as  the  remarkable  forty-seventh  verse 
in  the  thirty-first  chapter  of  the  first  Book  of  Moses 
testifies  :  in  this  verse,  which  is  plainly  the  product  of 
a  later  learned  interpretation,  "  Laban  the  Aramaean" 
calls  the  stone-wall  which  Jacob  in  the  Hebrew  lan- 
guage had  called  Galeed,  "  Jegar-Sahadutha,"  a  cor- 
rect Aramaean  expression.* 

According  to  the  familiar  tradition  of  the  Hebrew 
people  itself,  its  primitive  home  was  in  the  mountain- 
ous tract  extending  between  the  left  bank  of  the  Tigris 
and  Lake  Van,  which  separates  Mesopotamia  from 
Armenia  and  by  the  Greek  geographers  is  called 
Arrhapachitis.  (Arphaxad,  son  of  Sem,  is  the  ances- 
tor of  the  Hebrew  people — i  Moses  x.  22-25  >  xi-  I0)- 
From  the  above-mentioned  highlands  there  descended 
an  emigration  of  tribes  into  the  fertile  plain  of  Meso- 
potamia. (Salah,  Arphaxad's  son,  i  Moses  x.  24;  xi. 
1 2,  denotes  "emigration,"  "emission.")  They  crossed 
(Eber,  Salah's  son,  i  Moses  x.  24;  xi.  14,  is  "crossing," 
"passage")  the  Tigris,  and  then  they  separated,  (Peleg, 
Eber's  son,  i  Moses  x.  25;  xi.  16,  is  "separation," 
"division");  the  main  body  advanced  through  the 
heart  of  the  region  and  finally  settled  in  and  around 
the  Haran,  the  Karrhae  of  the  ancients,  in  the  north- 
western part  of  Mesopotamia  ;  a  smaller  band,  includ- 
ing the  ancestors  of  Israel,  struck  out  in  the  opposite 
direction  toward  the  extreme  southeast  and  at  Ur,  in 
Southern  Babylonia  (i  Moses  xi.  28,  31),  endeavored 
to  obtain  possession  of  permanent  settlements  ;  still  in 
the  end  they  preferred  to  follow  the  main  body  of  their 

*A11  Hebrew  words  and  names  are  given  according  to  the  spelling  of  the 
King  James  Bible. 


ii4     EPITOMES  OF  THRLE  SCIENCES. 

kinsmen  to  Haran  (i  Moses  xi.  31).  Here  their  mi- 
gratory instincts  awoke  once  more.  Following  the 
direction  of  the  common  high-road  of  the  ancient  world 
between  Egypt  and  Babylonia  they  journeyed  still 
further  toward  the  southwest  (i  Moses  xii.  4,  5).  The 
great  leader  of  this  tribal  migration  was  Abraham. 

The  most  careful  and  impartial  weighing  of  all  ad- 
verse arguments  and  difficulties  has  not  as  yet  been 
able  to  shake  my  faith  in  the  genuine  historical  au- 
thenticity of  Abraham  ;  I  regard  Abraham  as  an  his- 
torical personality  in  the  strictest  sense  of  the  word, 
as  really  so  as  Alaric,  the  king  of  the  Visigoths,  or 
Rurik,  the  prince  of  the  Varangians. 

Egypt,  perhaps,  was  the  original  ultimate  goal  of 
this  Abrahamic  migration,  that  same  Egypt  which 
time  out  of  mind  had  exerted  a  kind  of  magic  attrac- 
tion upon  all  Semitic  tribes,  and  which  probably  even 
during  the  very  centuries  of  the  Abrahamic  emigra- 
tion, on  repeated  occasions,  had  received,  and  (not 
always  willingly)  harbored  Semitic  guests  on  its  fruit- 
ful soil.  Still,  the  story  purporting  to  be  an  account 
of  Abraham's  expedition  into  Egypt  (i  Moses  xii.  10- 
20),  is  altogether  a  recent  one  and  purely  a  luxuriant 
outgrowth  from  the  stem  of  the  original  tradition.  As 
a  matter  of  fact  the  Abrahamic  migration  remained 
in  Canaan.  One  division  of  this  migration,  the  one  per- 
sonified in  Lot,  moved  toward  the  eastern  bank  of  the 
Jordan  (i  Moses  xiii.  7-12),  where  comparatively  early 
both  nationally  and  politically  it  became  consolidated 
as  Moab  and  Ammon  (i  Moses  xix.  37-38).  Abra- 
ham himself  settled  in  the  west  Jordan  region,  the 
Canaan  proper  (i  Moses  xiii.  12). 

Abraham  and  his  tribal  kinsmen  were  nomads,  wan- 
dering shepherds,  roaming  peacefully  about  the  coun- 


RISE   OF  THE  PEOPLE   OF  ISRAEL.      115 

try;  while  the  aboriginal  inhabitants  of  the  land  had 
long  before  attained  the  higher  culture  of  city  life.  The 
immigrants  borrowed  their  language  from  the  latter, 
but  at  the  same  time  guarded  as  before  the  primitive 
purity  of  their  pastoral  life,  and  their  healthy,  naive 
natural  sense  revolted  above  all  against  the  religion  of 
the  Canaanites. 

The  religious  character  of  the  Canaanites  particu- 
larly displayed  two  characteristic  manifestations  :  viz., 
religious  obscenity,  and  infant  sacrifice  ;  Abraham  held 
aloof  from  both.  In  the  touching  and  deeply  poetical 
story  of  the  intended  sacrifice  of  Isaac,  for  whom  ulti- 
mately a  ram  was  substituted,  tradition  (i  Moses  xxii.) 
has  recorded  Abraham's  positive  rejection  of  infant 
sacrifice. 

In  describing  this  predominant  feature,  and  in  char- 
acterizing Abraham  as  a  religious,  hero,  tradition  has, 
further,  correctly  interpreted  the  true  state  of  things. 
The  work  of  Moses  was  not  an  absolutely  new  one  ;  it 
is  linked  to  a  popular  initiative  of  the  past,  and  there 
is  no  reason  for  entertaining  a  diubt,  when  tradition 
even  in  this  most  specific  manifestation  of  the  Israel- 
itic  popular  spirit  makes  Abraham  the  patriarch  of  his 
race ;  although  very  naturally  we  now  are  unable  to 
prove  and  correctly  expound  in  all  its  details  this  "faith 
of  Abraham." 

The  descendants  of  Abraham  in  the  West  Jordan 
region,  true  to  the  usage  and  customs  of  their  fathers, 
continued  wandering  nomads.  Being  unable  to  wrest 
lands  from  the  superior  power  of  the  Canaanites,  they 
turned  their  eyes  southward  to  the  highland  about 
Mount  Seir,  where  the  primitive  tribes  of  the  Horites 
both  in  power  and  culture  stood  far  below  the  Canaan- 
ites. The  main  body  of  the  descendants  of  Abraham, 


n6     EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

accordingly,  pushed  forward  toward  the  south,  con- 
quered the  Horites.  and  settled  down  permanently  on 
Mount  Seir  as  Kdom  (  i  Moses  xxxvi.  i  ;  5  Moses  ii. 
12-22),  and  soon  effected  their  national  and  political 
consolidation.  Edom  thereupon  remained  in  undis- 
puted possession  of  the  aforesaid  territory. 

The  remnants  of  the  descendants  of  Abraham,  who 
had  remained  behind  in  the  West  Jordan  region,  would 
perhaps  have  been  absorbed  by  the  Canaanites,  or 
would  have  been  compelled  to  seek  connection  with 
one  of  the  kindred  tribes,  if  a  new  and  considerable 
immigration  from  the  common  ancestral  home  of  Ha- 
ran  had  not  brought  them  aid  and  reinforcements. 
This  was  the  Jacobite  migration,  represented  in  the 
person  of  Jacob. 

It  is  the  merit  of  Ewald  with  subtle  insight  to  have 
detected  in  Jacob  the  "after-comer,"  the  "loiterer." 

Jacob  appears  as  the  father  of  twelve  sons ;  these 
are  the  twelve  tribes  into  which  in  historical  times  the 
people  of  Israel  were  divided.  The  twelve  tribes  again 
became  subdivided  into  four  groups,  by  legend  per- 
sonified in  four  mothers,  two  legitimate  wives  and  two 
concubines  of  the  patriarch,  viz. :  a  Lea-group,  a  Ra- 
chel-group, a  Bilha-group,  and  a  Zilpa-group ;  Lea 
and  Rachel  were  the  more  considerable,  Bilha  and 
Zilpa  the  inferior  groups.  The  Lea-group  surpassed 
all  the  others  in  number  and  importance,  and  the 
Zilpa  division  was  connected  with  it ;  yet  the  Rachel- 
group  was  hardly  inferior  in  power  and  nobility,  and 
the  Bilha-group  closely  adhered  to  the  latter. 

The  legend  states  that  Jacob  brought  along  with 
him  his  eleven  sons  out  of  Haran ;  only  the  youngest, 
Benjamin,  was  born  in  Canaan.  Might  we  also  from 
this  draw  certain  historical  conclusions  ?  As  regards 


RISE   OF  THE  PEOPLE   OF  ISRAEL.      117 

the  rise  and  growth  of  the  tribes,  we  arc  confronted 
with  the  most  obscure  problems  of  the  prehistoric  pe- 
riod of  the  people  of  Israel,  which  perhaps  never  will 
be  perfectly  cleared  up.  Tradition  is  only  in  so  far 
incontrovertibly  right  as  it  relegates  the  beginnings  of 
tribal  growth  to  pre-Egyptian  times,  while  weighty 
reasons  corroborate  the  truth  of  this  fact;  and  we  have 
likewise  to  regard  as  correct,  that  the  tribe  of  Benja- 
min comparatively  rather  late  branched  off  from  that 
of  Joseph.  But  nothing  more  definite  than  this  can  be 
asserted. 

Ewald  has  given  expression  to  a  clear  hypothesis, 
which,  in  fact,  possesses  a  high  degree  of  probability. 
He  believes  that  in  the  Lea-group  he  can  discern  the 
remnants  of  the  Abrahamic  group  that  remained  in 
Canaan  ;  in  the  Rachel-group  the  auxiliary  reinforce- 
ment from  Haran,  that  is,  the  Jacobite  migration :- — a 
statement,  that  asserts  much.  At  all  events,  the  Jacobite 
migration  certainly  did  join  the  remnants  of  the  Abra- 
hamic migration  that  had  remained  in  Canaan,  and 
henceforth  becomes  the  representative  of  the  entire 
national  and  historical  development.  The  Jacobite 
migration,  however,  entered  not  only  externally  but 
also  spiritually  upon  the  inheritance  of  Abraham  ;  the 
faith  of  Abraham  passed  to  Jacob  and  was  perpetuated 
in  him  as  the  father's  noblest  legacy. 

Yet  at  an  early  time  there  must  have  arisen  con- 
tentions among  the  kindred  tribes.  Joseph,  from 
whom  Benjamin  perhaps  had  not  as  yet  branched  off, 
boasting  his  power  and  noble  pedigree,  claimed  the 
supreme  hegemony,  but  was  forced  to  yield  to  a  coa- 
lition of  the  other  tribes,  and  went  into  Egypt  where 
the  rich  pasturages  of  the  Asiatic  border-land,  since 
remote  antiquity  had  been  the  playground  of  Semitic 


n8     EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

nomads.  The  Lea-tribes  at  this  conjuncture  seem  to 
have  attempted  to  draw  the  Bilha-tribes,  Dan  and 
Naphtali,  into  the  spheres  of  their  power,  the  latter  sub- 
tribes  having  been  deprived  of  their  old  support ;  and 
Reuben,  particularly,  seems  to  have  intended  to  do 
them  violence,  (i  Moses  xxxv.  22);  but  both  those  vig- 
orous and  valiant  tribes  were  able  to  maintain  their  in- 
dependence, and  Reuben  himself  came  out  of  this  con- 
tention so  severely  damaged  that  henceforth  and  for 
all  time  to  come  he  lost  his  "primogeniture,"  his  old 
power  and  tribal  prestige  (i  Moses  xlix.  4). 

Later  there  occurred  events  that  forced  them  all  to 
emigrate  ;  but  we  are,  of  course,  utterly  unable  to  give 
a  precise  account  of  these  events.  On  this  occasion 
Joseph  wreaked  a  noble  vengeance,  hospitably  re- 
ceiving his  brothers  in  the  district  in  which  he  had 
settled,  oblivious  of  the  old  injury  and  only  mindful  of 
the  old  relationship.  And  in  this  manner  the  sons  of 
Jacob  became  inhabitants  of  the  land  of  Egypt. 

At  first  the  Egyptian  government  seems  to  have 
assumed  a  well-meaning  attitude  of  neutrality  toward 
the  strangers ;  but  soon  the  situation  became  com- 
pletely altered.  The  Pharaoh  Ramses  II  happened, 
at  the  time,  to  be  involved  in  a  severe  conflict  with 
the  populations  and  kingdoms  of  western  Asia;  Pales- 
tine, partly  at  least,  being  the  theatre  of  the  struggle. 
The  contest,  as  regards  Egypt,  ended,  indeed,  not  in 
open  defeat  nor  yet  in  victory  ;  the  ultimate  result  be- 
ing a  peace  which  nevertheless  failed  to  warrant  com- 
plete security  to  either  side.  The  consequence  was 
that  henceforward  Ramses  naturally  began  to  look  with 
mistrust  upon  the  foreign  population  of  alien  blood 
that  had  settled  on  the  Asiatic  border,  while  at  the 
same  time  he  happened  to  be  in  need  of  laborers  for 


RISE   OF   THE  PEOPLE   OF  ISRAEL.      ng 

his  numerous  public  works.  Pie,  accordingly,  resorted 
to  the  expedient  of  pressing  into  the  service  of  the 
State  all  the  Semites  who  were  settled  on  the  eastern 
border  of  Egypt  on  the  isthmus  of  Suez,  and  under 
strict  military  supervision  compelled  them  to  perform 
toilsome  villein-service. 

Incidentally  I  may  observe,  that  I  am  fully  aware 
of  the  arguments  which  have  recently  been  advanced 
against  the  hypothesis  that  Ramses  II,  the  Sesostris 
of  the  Hellenes,  in  reality  was  the  Pharaoh  of  the  op- 
pression, and  his  son  Merenpta  the  Pharaoh  of  the 
Exodus.  These  arguments  are  well  worthy  of  a  most 
earnest  consideration,  but  the  accepted  identification  ot 
both  Pharaohs  still  appears  to  me  as  the  most  satis- 
factory. 

In  this  manner,  Israel,  from  free  nomads,  had  been 
turned  into  Egyptian  socage-serfs.  So  long  as  Ram- 
ses, one  of  the  most  warlike  of  the  Pharaohs,  wielded 
with  a  strong  hand  his  iron  sceptre  in  Egypt,  the  op- 
pressed Israelites  seem  reluctantly  to  have  borne  up 
with  their  hard  fate.  But  even  chains  of  servitude 
availed  not  to  break  the  stubborn,  independent  heart " 
of  those  proud  Bedouins.  When  the  turbulent  Ramses 
was  succeeded  by  a  son  very  unlike  his  father,  the 
people  of  Israel  again  took  heart.  There  only  lacked 
a  resolute  leader  who  should  guide  the  latent  ferment 
to  a  definite  goal;  this  leader  was  soon  found. 

Moses,  a  Hebrew  of  the  tribe  of  Levi,  had  through 
a  fortunate  chance  been  received  into  the  ruling  caste 
of  Egypt  and  thus  found  an  opportunity  thoroughly  to 
acquire  Egyptian  training  and  culture.  But  the  nat- 
ural impulse  of  his  heart  drew  him  toward  his  own 
people ;  he  preferred  to  be  the  brother  of  these  de- 
spised serfs  rather  than  live  in  the  enjoyment  of 


120     EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

Egyptian  splendor  and  magnificence.  His  keen  in- 
sight soon  discerned  that  the  only  way  to  free  his  peo- 
ple from  the  iron  encompassment  of  Egyptian  for- 
tresses and  military  garrisons  lay  across  the  sea  into 
the  heart  of  the  desert.  It  was  a  desperate  undertak- 
ing. He  obtained  precise  information  concerning  the 
topography  and  the  political  situation  of  the  neighbor- 
ing country,  allied  himself  with  kindred  Bedouin  tribes 
of  the  Arabian  desert,  and  when  dreadful  scourges  and 
visitations  were  terrifying  the  Egyptians,  and  had  par- 
alyzed their  efforts,  Moses  thought  the  right  moment 
was  at  last  arrived  :  his  fellow-countrymen  with  many 
other  kindred  national  elements  in  their  train  (2  Moses 
xii.  38 ;  4  Moses  xi.  4)  assembled,  and  forthwith 
marched  forth  from  the  land  of  bondage. 

By  well-devised  marches  and  maneuvers  they  were 
able  to  deceive  the  Egyptian  guards  on  the  frontier  ; 
they  soon  reached  tne  Isthmus  of  Suez,  but  there  they 
were  overtaken  by  a  flying  corps  of  Egyptian  cavalry. 
Before  them  the  raging  sea,  behind  them  their  pursuers, 
panting  for  revenge.  It  was  a  moment  of  supreme 
anxiety  !  A  violent  northeast  wind  drove  the  shallow 
waters  from  the  channel,  and  they  marched  through 
on  the  dry  bottom  of  the  sea  into  the  desert,  to  freedom. 
The  pursuing  Egyptians  were  overwhelmed  by  the  re- 
treating flood  ;  but  Israel  was  safe. 

The  entire  highway  leading  to  Canaan  being  in  un- 
disputed possession  of  the  Egyptians,  and  the  latter  by 
treaties  with  the  neighboring  kingdoms  having  stipu- 
lated the  mutual  extradition  of  all  fugitives,  Moses 
accordingly  led  his  people  into  the  narrow  denies  of 
Mount  Sinai,  which  were  accessible  indeed  to  a  band 
of  wandering  nomads  but  could  not  be  approached  by 
a  large  army.  Israel  tarried  for  a  long  time  in  the 


RISE   OF  THE  PEOPLE   OE  ISR.IEL.      .2. 

region  of  Mount  Sinai,  and  in  this  grandly  impressive 
mountainous  scenery  tradition  has  located  the  scene  of 
Moses's  greatest  work,  his  religious  reorganization  of 
the  people.  The  entire  tradition  is  agreed  to  the  effect 
that  Moses  was  the  initiator,  pioneer,  and  creator  of 
that  unique  spirit  which  belonged  peculiarly  to  the 
people  of  Israel,  and  through  which  it  most  radically 
differed  from  other  tribes  related  by  speech  and  de- 
scent. There,  upon  Mount  Sinai,  Moses  gave  to  Is- 
rael its  national  God  Jahve*  (this  is  the  original  and 
correct  pronunciation,  instead  of  Jehova),  thereby  mak- 
ing Israel  a  nation  as  the  people  of  Jahve.  The  name 
of  Jahve,  in  fact,  cannot  be  explained  from  the  He- 
brew tongue,  but  seems  to  have  been  borrowed  from 
Sinai;  and,  indeed,  according  to  Israelitic  tradition, 
Moses's  adviser  and  assistant,  his  father-in-law  Jethro, 
was  a  prie-st  of  Sinai  (2  Moses  xviii). 

Still/  it  remains  utterly  impossible  to  state  precisely 
and  positively  of  what  the  work  of  Moses  really  con- 
sisted, since — however  unwelcome  the  truth  may  be — 
not  even  the  ten  commandments  can  be  regarded  as 
having  been  actually  formulated  by  Moses ;  we  have 
here  only  an  inverted  conclusion  from  effect  to  cause. 
Israel  is  the  only  people  known  to  us  that  never  had  a 
mythology ;  not  even  making  the  easy  step,  by  way  of 
complement,  of  associating  a  female  divinity  with  the 
highest  divine  being.  Jahve's  unique  nature  must'  ac- 
cordingly be  a  Mosaic  idea.  Jahve  alone  is  the  God 

*The  word  Jaltve,  according  to  the  traditional  etymology,  is  derived 
from  the  verb  haj'ah,  "  to  live,  to  exist,  to  be,"  and  signifies  "  the  being,  the 
living,  the  eternal  one."  So  it  is  explained  in  "The  Idea  of  God,"  page  7  and 
8.  Professor  Corni  11  in  a  private  letter  to  the  editor  of  The  Open  Court,  writes- 
"  My  reason  for  not  considering  Jahve  an  original  Hebrew  word,  is  founded 
upon  the  fact  that  kaj'ak,  in  the  sense  of  to  be,  is  not  Hebrew.  In  a  word 
originally  Hebrew  the  change  of  v  into  /  would  be  difficult  to  account 
for."— ED. 


122     EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

of  Israel  and  this  Jahve  is  the  origin  and  source  of  all 
divine  and  human  law;  this  must  be  a  thought  pecu- 
liarly Mosaic.  A  lofty  spiritualization  of  the  divine  idea 
and,  as  a  direct  result  of  this,  a  lofty  spiritualization  of 
the  Ethos  are  to  be  regarded  the  prominent  features  of 
the  Mosaic  Jahve  faith.  We  have,  moreover,  to  at- 
tribute to  Moses  the  creation  of,  at  least,  a  very  sim- 
ple worship;  since  a  religion  without  worship  would  be, 
with  primitive  nations,  inconceivable.  The  institution, 
also,  of  a  priesthood  as  the  only  legitimate  mediator 
between  Jahve  and  Israel  must  be  Mosaic  ;  but  the 
tradition  that  Moses  entrusted  his  brother  Aaron  with 
this  high  office  has  not  been  found  as  yet  among  the 
oldest  sources. 

Sinai,  however,  was  only  a  station  and  not  the  final 
goal  of  the  migration.  Soon  after,  the  multitudes, 
strengthened  by  their  rest,  moved  onward  ;  this  time  to 
Kadesh-Barnea  in  the  desert  south  of  Canaan  (4  Moses 
xiii.  27;  xx.  i,  14;  5  Moses  i.  19,  46;  Judges  xi.  16, 
17).  This  locality,  at  least,  seemed  sufficiently  adapted 
to  receive  the  permanent  colonization  of  frugal  shep- 
herds ;  it  lay  beyond  the  reach  of  the  Egyptian  arms, 
and  yet  on  the  very  threshold  of  the  coveted  land  itself. 
Here  they  might  quietly  await  the  development  of 
things.  According  to  all  traces  the  sojourn  in  Kadesh 
must  have  been  a  rather  long  one.  Moses  probably 
died  there.  Tradition  is  constant  in  regard  to  the 
point  that  he  never  personally  entered  the  land  of 
promise ;  in  fact,  neither  he  nor  any  other  of  the  emi- 
grants that  left  Egypt.  And  this  constant  tradition  is 
all  the  weightier  if  we  recall  to  mind  that  here  there  is 
the  question  of  a  distance  that  under  normal  circum- 
stances it  would  be  easy  to  complete  within  a  fortnight. 

An  external  event  finally  brought  Israel  to  the  goal 


RISE  OF  THE  PEOPLE   OF  f SKA  EL.      123 

of  its  wishes.  The  Canaanites,  here  called  Amorites, 
under  a  king  called  Sihon,  made  an  advance  upon  the 
eastern  bank  of  the  Jordan,  drove  the  Moabites  and 
Ammonites  out  of  the  most  fertile  parts  of  their  terri- 
tory and  founded  a  new  Amorite  kingdom  with  the 
capital  of  Hesbon  (4  Moses  xxi.  26).  Then  they  re- 
membered their  kinsmen  in  the  desert  at  Kadesh.  Moab 
and  Ammon  themselves,  perhaps,  on  this  occasion  in- 
voked the  aid  of  Israel ;  at  all  events  they  were  wel- 
come allies,  and  the  youthful  and  well-husbanded  nat- 
ural strength  of  Israel  was  able  to  achieve  the  pro- 
posed task :  they  destroyed  the  kingdom  of  Sihon  of 
Hesbon  ;  and  Israel  remained  settled  in  the  fruitful 
region,  and  kept  for  itself  the  price  of  war  and  victory. 

Yet  soon  the  fertile  valleys  and  meadows  could  not 
contain  the  ever-increasing  number  of  men  and  flocks; 
they  were  urged  resistlessly  to  cross  the  Jordan.  There 
seemed  to  exist  every  possibility  of  settling  down  across 
the  river.  According  to  all  accounts  the  Canaanites 
were  scattered  in  numerous  small  isolated  territories 
without  internal  connections  or  mutual  sympathy; 
moreover  their  energy  had  been  relaxed  by  luxurious 
habits,  and  in  valor  they  could  not  match  the  impetu- 
ous sons  of  the  desert. 

Judah  was  the  first  to  advance  (Judges  i.  1-20;  i 
Moses  xxxviii.  i).  He  crossed  the  Jordan  and  turned 
toward  the  south  where  the  mountain  range  that  later 
bore  the  name  of  Judah,  with  its  fruitful  slopes  excited 
his  covetousness.  Judah  doubtless  succeeded  in  gain- 
ing a  permanent  foothold  in  this  region,  but  only  at 
the  cost  of  severe  losses  which  were  made  good  by  the 
amalgamation  of  Canaanite,  Edomitic,  and  Arabic  ele- 
ments; but  after  a  hard  and  long  struggle  "the  inter- 
loper" (Pharez)  became  the  master  of  "the  first  be- 


1 24     EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

gotten"  (Zarah)  (i  Moses  xxxviii.  27  30).  In  the  time 
of  David,  when  Judali  stands  in  the  broad  day-light  of 
history,  the  Israelitic  part  of  the  population  is  undis- 
puted master  of  the  country,  and  the  latter  throughout 
felt  as  Israelitic. 

The  tribes  of  Simeon  and  Levi  made  the  second 
attempt,  which  turned  out  a  complete  failure.  By 
means  of  treason  they  obtained  possession  of  the 
Canaanite  City  of  Schechem,  commanding  the  Mountain 
of  Ephraim  ;  but  Israel  turned  shuddering  away  from 
the  nefarious  deed,  and  Simeon  and  Levi  were  van- 
quished by  the  revenge  of  the  Canaanites  ( i  Mos.  xxxiv. 
25  30  ;  xlix.  5-7).  Levi  as  tribe  was  entirely  exter- 
minated, yet  later  through  a  most  remarkable  me- 
tamorphosis awoke  to  a  new  life  as  a  sacerdotal 
caste,  and  the  remnants  of  Simeon  hid  with  the  kind- 
red tribe  of  Judah  (Judges  i.  3)  by  which  they  were 
absorbed. 

The  house  of  Joseph  undertook  the  third  and  most 
successful  expedition.  Only  Reuben  and  Gad  continued 
to  dwell  in  the  East-Jordan  district  ;  the  other  seven 
tribes  under  the  leadership  of  the  Ephraimite  Josuah 
combined  in  a  common  campaign  against  Middle  and 
Northern  Palestine.  They  gained  a  firm  foothold 
in  Gilgal  on  the  other  side  of  the  Jordan  (Josh.  iv.  and 
v.)  and  from  that  position  they  were  able  to  conquer 
Jericho  (Josh,  vi.),  Ai  (Josh,  viii.),  and  Bethel  (Judges  i. 
22-25).  Then  at  last  the  Canaanites  were  aroused 
into  a  determined  and  general  resistance,  but  at  Gibeon 
they  were  an  other  time  defeated  by  Josuah  (Josh.  x. ) 
and  thus  Israel  became  the  master  of  all  Middle  Pa- 
lestine. In  the  north  they  were  again  confronted  by 
a  coalition  of  Canaanites  under  king  Jabin  of  Hazor  ;  but 
at  Lake  Merom  it  was  likewise  vanquished  by  Joshua. 


ItJSE   OF  THF  PJ'IOPLJ'.    OF  1SRAFL.      125 

It  would  be  erroneous  to  suppose  that  the  whole 
land  of  Palestine,  directly  upon  occupation,  became 
the  undisputed  possession  of  the  Israelites.  In  the 
first  chapter  of  the  Book  of  Judges — one  of  the  most 
important  and  valuable  of  extant  historical  documents 
— we  possess  a  detailed  enumeration  of  all  the  Ca- 
naanites  whom  Israel  "  did  not  drive  out. "  From  this 
enumeration  it  appears,  that  the  best  and  most  fertile 
parts  of  the  country,  and  above  all,  the  majority  of  the 
cities — with  their  strong  fortifications,  at  all  times  im- 
pregnable to  the  rude  military  art  of  the  Israelites — 
remained  in  the  possession  of  the  Canaanites.  Only 
the  forest-covered  mountain  ranges  of  Middle  and 
Northern  Palestine  were  occupied  by  Israel ;  and  a 
very  long  and  obstinate  work  had  still  to  be  performed 
before  the  Canaanite  population  was  finally  sub- 
jugated ;  a  task  partly  accomplished  by  force  of  arms 
and  the  imposition  of  tributes,  and  partly  by  peccable 
conquest  and  absorption  with  the  people  of  Israel. 

It  must  be  admitted  that  to  Moses  and  his  work 
Israel  was  indebted  for  the  power  with  which  through 
ages  it  struggled  victoriously  in  full  consciousness  of 
the  high  aim  that  was  to  be  attained.  Moses  had 
given  to  the  people  a  nationality  and  therewith  an 
inalienable  palladium,  which,  purified  and  strengthened 
by  the  power  of  religion,  could  not  submit  to  oppres- 
sion, but  marched  conquering  onward ;  it  was  owing  to 
Moses  alone  that  in  Canaan  Israel  did  not  become 
Canaanites,  but,  on  the  contrary,  that  the  Canaanites 
were  transformed  into  Israel. 

Indeed,  the  actual  outcome  of  the  protracted  con- 
flict between  these  two  peoples  and  different  na- 
tionalities, had  not,  to  human  calculations,  by  any 
means  been  absolutely  certain.  In  Canaan  Israel 


ia6     EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

passed  from  a  nomadic  to  an  agricultural  life,  and 
might  riot  such  a  radical  change  of  life  and  of  its  con- 
ditions easily  have  brought  about  a  transformation 
of  national  character?  Irrespective  of  the  superior 
culture  and  number  of  the  Canaanites,  Israel  certainly 
harbored  within  itself  a  very  dangerous  foe,  and  a 
living  germ  of  disorganisation;  viz.,  the  stubborn,  stiff- 
necked  feeling  of  independence  and  the  strong  family 
instincts,  peculiar  to  nomads,  that  still  clung  to  the 
national  character  after  the  people  had  abandoned 
nomadic  ways  of  life.  Even  after  the  common  effort 
under  Joshua  had  partially  laid  the  foundations  of  na- 
tional organization,  the  people  were  once  again  broken 
up  into  families  and  tribes,  who  without  concerted 
action  and  without  discipline,  planlessly  and  aimlessly 
sought  localities  in  which  to  settle  down.  Tradition, 
also,  has  expressly  handed  down  a  number  of  peculiar 
features  of  this  tribal  and  family  history. 

One  fraction  of  the  tribe  of  Manasseh, — the  fam- 
ilies of  Jair  and  Machir — conquered  the  region  to 
the  east  of  lake  Galilee  (4  Mos.  xxxii.  39-41  ;  5  Mos.  iii. 
14-15;  Judg.  x.  3-5) — a  fact  of  the  greatest  importance, 
because  thereby  there  was  reestablished  a  connection 
between  the  West-Jordan  country  and  Gilead,  as  the 
Israelites  called  the  East-Jordan  region.  The  tribe 
of  Dan  in  its  struggle  against  the  powerful  and  warlike 
Philistines,  had  failed  to  secure  a  permanent  settle- 
ment in  the  fertile  plain  along  the  coast  of  the  Med- 
iterranean; but  Dan  thereupon  conquered  the  city 
of  Laish  in  the  far  off  north  on  the  slopes  of  Mount 
Hermon,  and  changed  its  name  into  that  of  Dan 
(Judges  xvii.  and  xviii. ;  compare  also  i.  34).  Shamir, 
on  Mount  Ephraim,  was  settled  by  the  family  of  Tola  of 
the  tribe  Issachar  (Judges  x.  1-2);  Pirathon,  in  the 


RISE   OF  THE  PEOPLE   OF  ISRAEL.      127 

same  locality,  by  the  family  of  Abdon  (Judges  xii. 
13-15);  Aijalon  by  the  Zebulonite  family  of  Elon 
(Judges  xii.  11-12).  This  dispersion  might  have  proved 
injurious  and  even  ruinous,  if  over  all  of  them,  each 
family  and  each  tribe,  there  had  not  reigned  supreme 
one  common  idea;  namely,  Jahve,  the  God  of  Israel. 

Jahve  was  the  only  national  principle,  the  only 
bond  that  bound  together  all  Israelites  ;  in  fact,  as 
Jahve's  own  people  they  were  a  nation.  Only  extreme 
emergency  had  been  able  to  effect  a  national  union, 
and  that  not  a  general,  but  merely  a  transient  one. 

After  Joshua's  victories,  the  Canaanites,  through 
the  concentration  and  straining  of  all  their  resources, 
seem  to  have  made  but  one  single  effort  to  overcome 
the  invaders.  Under  the  leadership  of  Sisera  there 
was  effected  a  powerful  coalition  of  Canaanite  kings, 
which  undertook  a  war  of  extermination  against  Israel. 
This  war  of  extermination  threatened  to  be  realized  to 
the  fullest  extent.  The  Israelites  were  forced  to  seek 
hiding-places  in  the  woods  and  in  the  mountains, 
where  they  stayed  until  Jahve  finally  brought  assist- 
ance. At  this  critical  moment  a  divinely  inspired 
woman,  the  prophetess  Deborah,  aroused  the  dis- 
couraged Israelites.  Under  the  leadership  of  Barak, 
of  the  tribe  of  Issachar,  40,000  Israelites  of  the  tribes 
of  Ephraim,  Manasseh,  Benjamin,  Zebulun,  Issachar, 
and  Naphtali  assembled  together,  and  now  the  power 
of  the  Canaanites  was  unable  to  resist  the  ardent  im- 
petuosity of  that  great  host,  fighting  for  Jahve.  At 
Taanak,  on  the  river  Kishon,  the  Canaanite  army  was 
defeated  and  dispersed,  and  Sisera  himself  in  his  flight 
murdered  by  a  woman  (Judges  iv.  and  v.).  After  this 
battle  we  never  again  hear  of  resistance  on  the  part 
of  Canaanites. 


128     EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

Israel  at  last  enjoyed  rest  from  the  Canaanites  ; 
but  now  there  threatened  still  another  foe.  Kindred 
tribes  looked  with  envy  upon  the  success  of  Israel, 
and  naturally  coveted  their  own  share  of  the  Canaan- 
ite  prey.  Thus  Moab  even  advanced  across  the  Jor- 
dan, and  at  Jericho,  its  king,  Eglon,  received  the  hom- 
age and  tribute  of  the  tribe  of  Benjamin,  until  the  Ben- 
jamite  Ehud  stabbed  Eglon  and  freed  his  people  from 
the  foreign  yoke  (Judges  iii.  12-30).  Likewise  Ammon 
advanced  toward  the  Jordan,  and  the  hard-pressed 
tribe  of  Gad  was  only  saved  through  Jephthah's  valor 
(Judges  xi.).  At  the  very  time  when  in  Canaan  Israel 
was  becoming  an  agricultural  people,  the  nation  con- 
stantly suffered  from  the  hostility  and  rapine  of  the 
sons  of  the  desert ;  Amalekites,  Midianites,  Ishmaelites, 
all  of  them  sought  to  enrich  themselves  at  the  expense 
of  the  Israelite  husbandman,  and  to  rob  him  of  the 
fruits  of  his  labor. 

The  fact  that  bands  of  Midianites  advanced,  kill- 
ing and  plundering,  as  far  as  Mount  Tabor,  far  in  the 
north,  in  the  vicinity  of  Lake  Galilee  in  the  West- 
Jordan  region,  is  in  itself  a  telling  proof  of  how  de- 
fenceless Israel  remained  through  its  unfortunate 
disunion  against  these  predatory  sons  of  the  de- 
sert. 

This  invasion  of  Midianites,  moreover,  had  certain 
important  consequences.  From  sheer  arrogance  and 
wantonness  the  Midianites  had  on  Mount  Tabor  butch- 
ered a  number  of  prisoners  belonging  to  the  noble  Man- 
assite  family  of  Abiezer.  Then  Gideon  or  Zerubbaal, 
the  head  of  the  family,  took  to  arms  to  wreak  ven- 
geance of  blood  on  the  murderers.  He  assembled  his 
own  household  and  retainers,  to  the  number  of  300, 
and  with  these  went  in  pursuit  of  the  departed  Mid- 


RISE  OF  THE  PEOPLE  OF  ISRAEL.      i2y 

ianites.  He  overtook  them  far  beyond  the  Jordan  ; 
he  succeeded  in  dividing  the  forces  of  the  enemy,  and 
took  prisoners  the  two  Midianite  kings,  Zebah  and  Zal- 
munna,  whom  he  ordered  to  be  executed  in  expiaiion 
of  his  murdered  brothers.  He  thereupon  punished 
the  inhabitants  of  Succoth  and  Penuel,  who  had  scorn 
fully  refused  him  their  assistance  in  this  expedition 
of  revenge  (Judges  viii.). 

The  conclusion  of  the  narrative  concerning  Gideon 
has,  unfortunately,  been  mutilated.  It  must  have  re- 
lated, that  Gideon  actually  founded  a  tribal  kingdom, 
erected  in  his  ancestral  city  of  Ophrah  a  golden  image 
of  Jahve,  and  held  a  regular  court,  with  a  number  of 
female  retainers. 

.Thus  from  the  house  of  Joseph  proceeded  the  first 
attempt  at  political  concentration — the  foundation  of 
a  dynastical  kingdom  ;  and,  perhaps,  from  this  dynas- 
tical  kingdom  there  might  have  been  developed  a  folk- 
kingship — but  the  time  for  this  had  not  yet  arrived. 

Gideon,  during  his  lifetime,  remained  in  the  undis- 
puted possession  of  power  over  Joseph  ;  but  after  his 
death  the  harem-regiment — that  constant  curse  of  all 
oriental  dynasties — likewise  effected  the  ruin  of  his 
house.  Abimelech,  the  son  of  a  woman  of  noble  birth 
from  the  city  of  Schechem — at  the  time  a  thoroughly 
Canaanite  city — with  the  aid  of  his  Schechemite  retain- 
ers, seized  the  supreme  power,  attacked  Ophrah  and 
slew  his  brothers — according  to  tradition,  three  score 
and  ten  in  number — upon  one  stone  ;  only  the  young- 
est escaped.  This  event,  naturally,  was  not  of  a  kind 
to  cause  kingship  to  strike  deep  roots  in  the  heart  of 
the  people  of  Israel. 

Abimelech  enjoyed  the  usurped  power  for  only  three 
years,  when  he  became  involved  in  difficulties  with  the 


r 30     EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

men  of  Schechem.  He  also  played  the  part  of  an  Is- 
raelite king  to  the  city  of  Schechem,  which  scarcely 
proved  agreeable  to  the  proud  Canaanite  nobles.  They 
openly  revolted  against  him  ;  in  consequence  of  which 
event  he  conquered  Schechem  and  razed  it  to  the 
ground.  But  fate  overtook  him  at  Thebez,  upon 
which  city  he  had  wished  to  bring  the  same  ruin.  In 
the  act  of  setting  fire  to  a  tower,  into  which  the  in- 
habitants of  Thebez  had  fled  for  shelter,  a  woman  from 
the  roof  of  the  structure  hurled  a  mill-stone  upon  his 
head,  and  he  was  killed  (Judges  ix. ).  Thus  the  first 
attempt  to  found  an  Israelitic  kingdom  had  ended  in 
murder  and  conflagration. 

Again  the  old  anarchy  prevailed,  the  old  lack  of 
cohesion,  which  the  Book  of  Judges  describes  in  the 
following  words  :  "  In  those  days  there  was  no  king 
in  Israel,  but  every  man  did  that  which  was  right  in 
his  own  eyes  "  (Judges  xvii.  6  ;  xxi.  25). 

Incidentally,  it  may  be  observed,  that  it  is  simply 
impossible  to  give  even  an  approximate  chronological 
statement  and  arrangement  of  the  events  between  the 
exodus  from  Egypt  and  the  reign  of  Saul.  If  Mer- 
enptah  was  the  Pharaoh  of  the  exodus,  we  may  place 
them  in  the  interval  between  about  1300  to  about  1030; 
the  year  1017  as  the  year  of  Saul's  death  seems  toler- 
ably certain. 

The  kingship  of  Gideon,  like  a  will-o'-the-wisp,  had 
vanished  from  sight,  and  been  followed  by  utter  dark- 
ness over  the  land  of  Israel.  This  darkness  is  only 
cleared  up  by  the  subsequent  events  that  brought  about 
the  solid  foundation  of  the  national  kingdom.  The 
national  kingdom  had  become  an  absolute  necessity. 
An  orderly  government,  popular  feeling,  and  nation- 
ality could  only  be  preserved  through  the  concentra- 


RISE   OF  THE  PEOPLE   OF  ISRAEL.      131 

tion  in  some  strong  hand  of  all  the  scattered  and,  con- 
sequently, weakened  national  energies. 

The  notion  that  the  creation  of  a  purely  human 
kingship  would  be  a  grievous  sin,  because  an  apostasy 
from  Jahve,  the  only  legitimate  king  of  Israel,  is  but 
a  later  assumption  of  Hebrew  theological  schools,  and 
discoverable  for  the  first  time,  with  certainty,  in  the 
prophet  Hosea.  This  idea  was  entirely  unknown  to 
the  olden  time.  The  oldest  sources  relate  all  these 
events  with  a  rejoicing  and  thankful  spirit ;  in  the  rise 
of  the  national  kingdom  they  justly  behold  a  signal 
proof  of  the  grace  of  Jahve;  a  direct,  divine  interposi- 
tion of  Jahve  for  the  redemption  of  his  people. 

On  ths  present  occasion,  the  troubles  arose  from  a 
different  direction,  and  were  by  far  more  serious  than 
any  former  had  been.  To  the  southwest  of  Mount 
Ephraim,  toward  the  Mediterranean,  there  dwelt  the 
warlike  and  valiant  race  of  the  Philistines — the  hered- 
itary foe  of  Israel.  The  Philistines  profiting  by  the 
helplessness  of  Israel,  advanced  toward  the  mountain 
and  invaded  the  fertile  plain  of  Jezreel.  The  first 
collision  between  the  belligerents,  at  Ebenezer, 
proved  calamitous  to  Israel.  Then  Israel,  in  order  to 
secure  the  assistance  of  Jahve,  fetched  out  of  the  tem- 
ple at  Shiloh  the  Ark  of  the  Covenant,  the  ancient  and 
sacred  war-symbol  of  the  house  of  Joseph  ;  but  the 
second  battle  turned  out  even  more  disastrous.  Thirty 
thousand  Israelites  covered  the  field  of  battle,  the  Ark 
of  the  Covenant  was  captured,  and  the  power  of  Jo- 
seph had  been  utterly  broken  (i  Samuel  iv.).  The 
Philistines  dragged  the  Ark  of  the  Covenant  as  a  tro- 
phy of  war  into  their  own  country,  burned  and  de- 
stroyed the  temple  at  Shiloh,  and  conquered  the  whole 
land  of  Israel  to  the  bank  of  the  Jordan  ;  the  people 


132     EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

were  disarmed  and  held  in  awe  by  Philistine  viceroys 
and  Philistine  strongholds.  Thus  Dagon  had  tri- 
umphed over  Jahve. 

But  Jahve  had  not  forsaken  his  people ;  through 
the  trying  fire  of  extreme  need  and  suffering  he  wished 
to  weld  it  together  to  a  strong  and  united  nation.  An 
aged  seer,  Samuel  by  name,  had  discovered  in  the 
Benjamite  Saul  the  man  of  the  period,  and  had  kin- 
dled in  his  heroic  soul  a  spark  of  patriotic  enthusiasm. 
Just  at  this  time  the  Ammonites  also  insolently  insulted 
Israel,  and  threatened  the  city  of  Jabesh,  in  Gilead. 
Then  Saul  slaughtered  a  yoke  of  oxen  and  sent  the 
bleeding  pieces  throughout  Israel  with  the  following 
message  :  "Whosoever  cometh  not  forth  after  Saul,  so 
shall  it  be  done  unto  his  oxen  !  "  A  desperate  host  then 
assembled  around  the  bold  leader  ;  the  enemies  were 
taken  by  surprise  and  scattered  to  the  winds. 

The  people,  exultant  over  this  first  victory  after 
long  servitude  and  shame,  bore  the  fortunate  general 
in  triumph  to  the  ancient  sacred  spot  of  Gilgal,  there 
to  place  upon  his  head  the  royal  diadem  (i  Samuel 
ix.-xi.). 

Saul  owed  his  crown  to  his  sword,  and  his  whole 
reign  was  one  uninterrupted  strife ;  for  the  main  point 
was,  to  become  master  in  his  own  land,  and  to  secure 
it  against  determined  enemies  and  overweening  neigh- 
bors. Saul  at  once  addressed  himself  to  the  more  dif- 
ficult and  more  important  task  of  throwing  off  the  yoke 
of  the  Philistines.  His  son,  Jonathan,  slew  the  Phil- 
istine governor,  who  held  his  court  at  Gibeah,  and  at 
this  signal  of  revolt  the  Philistine  armies  again  poured 
into  the  insurgent  land  of  Israel.  Saul  could  only 
muster  600  men  who  had  remained  with  him  ;  but  the 
lofty  consciousness  of  fighting  for  home  and  hearth, 


RISE   OF  THE  PEOPLE   OF  ISRAEL.      133 

for  freedom  and  honor,  imparted  heroic  courage  to  the 
men  of  Israel ;  Jonathan,  above  all,  performed  won- 
ders of  bravery,  and,  after  a  hot  contest,  victory  de- 
clared itself  for  the  desperate  little  band  (i  Samuel 
xiii.-xiv.). 

Yet  this  success  was  only  a  transient  one.  Saul 
regarded  as  his  main  task  to  keep  in  constant  readi- 
ness the  fighting  strength  of  his  people,  and  to  this 
end  he  assembled  about  his  person  a  small  standing 
army,  made  up  of  3,000  of  his  boldest  subjects.  Thus 
the  star  of  King  Saul  arose  at  the  beginning,  bright 
and  brilliant,  but  very  soon  it  was  overcast  by  dark 
clouds. 

An  "evil  spirit  from  God"  suddenly  saddened  the 
heart  of  the  king.  His  attendants  called  to  his  side 
the  Judean  David,  from  Bethlehem,  a  man  of  tried 
courage,  a  skilled  performer  on  the  harp,  a  knight  and 
troubadour  in  one,  who,  by  his  pleasant  art,  was  ex- 
pected to  dispel  the  melancholy  of  the  king.  This 
new  actor  on  the  stage  of  Israelitic  history  is,  next  to 
Moses,  the  greatest  personage  of  ancient  Israel  ;  for 
him  had  been  reserved  the  glory  of  completing  the 
work  of  Moses.  What  Saul  began,  David  executed 
to  its  fullest  extent  ;  outwardly  he  made  Israel  free 
and  independent,  and  inwardly  united  ;  the  political 
and  national  consolidation  of  the  people  of  Israel  is 
the  work  of  David. 

David  was  one  of  those  divinely  endowed  natures 
that  win  the  hearts  of  all ;  a  born  ruler,  to  whom  all 
willingly  submit,  and  serve  with  alacrity.  He  ap- 
pears before  the  king  as  a  highly  attractive  figure, 
graced  with  every  ornament  of  mind  and  body — radi- 
ant with  youth,  beauty,  and  strength  ;  by  his  bewitch- 
ing amiableness  commanding  the  love  of  all.  At  first 


134     EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

everything  went  well.  Saul,  too,  could  not  resist  the 
magnetism  of  his  person  ;  he  made  him  his  armor- 
bearer,  his  squire  or  "aide,"  and  while  David  became 
devotedly  attached  to  Saul's  son,  the  king  gave  him 
his  daughter  in  marriage. 

This  state  of  harmony,  however,  was  not  destined 
to  last  long.  The  Philistines  again  invaded  the  land 
and,  during  the  war  that  ensued,  David  distinguished 
himself  to  such  an  eminent  degree,  that  even  the 
glory  of  the  king  was  overshadowed.  At  that  time  of 
history  kings  had  also  to  be  the  bravest  of  their  na- 
tion, and  we  therefore  easily  understand  that  gloomy 
jealousy  now  began  to  devour  the  melancholy  heart  of 
the  suspicious  monarch.  In  a  fit  of  sullen  dejection 
pnce,  he  even  hurled  a  javelin  at  his  son-in-law,  and 
the  latter  fled  his  presence.  From  that  instant  Saul's 
good  genius  forsook  him  forever,  and  the  close  of  his 
reign  exhibits  a  sad  picture  of  civil  strife  and  external 
troubles. 

Despite  the  critical  condition  of  his  kingdom  Saul, 
with  an  armed  retinue,  pursues  the  fleeing  David, 
and,  finally,  drives  him  out  of  the  country.  The  hounded 
fugitive  was  at  last  compelled  to  seek  refuge  among 
the  Philistines — the  enemies  of  Israel.  Within  a  year 
and  four  months  from  that  time,  fate  had  overtaken 
the  Israelitic  king.  The  Philistine  host  again  com- 
bined against  Israel.  A  decisive  battle  was  fought  on 
Mount  Gilboa,  in  which  Israel  was  utterly  routed. 
Saul,  beholding  the  death  of  his  three  sons,  fell,  in  a 
fit  of  despair,  upon  his  own  sword.  Such  was  the  un- 
toward end  of  the  first  king  of  Israel. 

Saul  is  a  truly  tragical  figure.  Although  en- 
dowed with  a  grand  and  noble  disposition,  chivalrous 
and  heroical,  fired  with  ardent  zeal,  yet,  after  all,  he 


RISE   OF  THE   PEOPLE   OF  ISRAEL.      135 

had  achieved  next  to  nothing.  At  his  death  the  con- 
dition of  things  had  again  become  the  same  as  at  the 
time  of  his  accession  ;  Israel  lay  prostrate,  and  the 
power  of  the  Philistines  was  greater  and  firmer  than 
ever  before.  Saul's  failures  must  be  attributed  mainly 
to  his  moral  disposition.  He  was  more  of  a  soldier 
than  a  ruler.  He  lacked  the  commanding  personality, 
the  inborn  power  of  leadership,  and  still  more  so,  the 
versatile,  statesmanlike  talent  that  David  possessed. 
Saul  had  honestly  performed  his  kingly  duties  ;  when 
attacked,  he  returned  blow  for  blow  with  telling  vigor  ; 
but  he  was  far  from  being  a  creative,  organizing  ge- 
nius. Above  all,  he  lacked,  to  a  deplorable  extent,  all 
sense  and  appreciation  of  the  essential  character  and 
national  raison  d'etre  of  the  people  of  Israel.  In  this 
latter  respect,  tradition  has  handed  down  a  clearly 
drawn  portrait  of  Israel's  king. 

Saul  was  well  on  the  way  toward  changing  Israel 
into  a  secular,  military  state,  and  thus  turning  the 
nation  from  its  true  historical  mission.  A  conquering 
kingdom  of  this  world,  perhaps,  might  have  boasted  a 
brief  period  of  transient  splendor  and  prosperity;  but 
it  would  have  disappeared,  without  leaving  a  trace 
of  its  existence,  like  Egypt  and  Assyria,  Babylonia 
and  Persia,  Media  and  Lydia.  King  Saul,  certainly, 
is  entitled  to  our  deepest  compassion  and  heart- felt 
sympathy,  but  the  fall  of  his  dynasty  was  fortunate 
for  Israel. 

Yet  not  unavenged  was  Saul's  blood  shed  on  the 
heights  of  Gilboa  ;  his  avenger  and  the  genuine  per- 
former of  his  life-work  arose  in  the  Judean  whom  he 
had  attacked  and  persecuted.  Cautious  conduct  was 
now  necessary  on  David's  part.  It  would  have  been 
worse  than  foolhardy  with  only  600  Judeans  to  open 


136     EPITOMES  OF  THREE  SCIENCES. 

war  with  the  Philistines.  Above  all  David  wished  to 
save  what  still  might  be  saved.  He  therefore  caused 
himself  to  be  anointed  hereditary  king  of  Judah,  under 
Philistine  suzerainty ;  while  Abner,  Saul's  general, 
assembled  the  scattered  remnants  of  Saul's  power  in 
the  East-Jordan  country,  and  at  Mahanaim  made 
young  Ishbosheth  king  ;  the  latter  was  Saul's  only 
surviving  son,  and  probably  not  yet  of  age. 

David  resided  seven  years  in  Hebron  and  Ish- 
bosheth likewise  seven  in  Mahanaim.  Abner  made 
the  attempt  to  subject  David  to  the  sceptre  of  Ish- 
bosheth, but  in  this  attempt  he  was  completely  foiled 
by  the  bravery  of  David's  Judeans.  Shortly  afterwards 
Abner,  the  only  support  of  the  house  of  Saul,  was 
murdered  and  Ishbosheth  himself  fell  a  victim  to  the 
vengeance  of  blood  ;  and  at  this  conjuncture  the  north 
ern  tribes  agreed  to  confer  upon  David  the  govern- 
ment of  the  lands  of  Saul. 

Even  the  first  measure  enacted  by  David  as  over- 
king  of  Israel  bears  witness  to  his  high  statesmanly 
genius.  The  city  of  Jebus  remained  still  in  the  hands 
of  the  Canaanites ;  David  conquered  this  city  and 
made  it  the  political  capital  of  the  new  kingdom.  This 
city  was  strongly  fortified  by  its  natural  surroundings, 
situated  rather  toward  the  middle-region  of  the  king- 
dom, and  while  independent  of  any  of  the  tribes,  and 
raised  above  and  beyond  their  petty  rivalries,  it  was 
better  adapted  for  the  purpose  intended  than  any  other 
city.  As  a  characteristic  contrast  to  this  policy,  Saul, 
even  as  king,  had  quietly  continued  to  reside  in  his 
native  village.  The  founding  of  Jerusalem,  as  David 
called  his  new  "city  of  David,"  was  a  fact  of  the 
greatest  historical  importance,  when  we  bear  in  mind 


RISE   OF  THE  PEOPLE   OF  ISRAEL.      137 

what  Jerusalem  became  to  the  people  of  Israel  and 
later  through  Israel  to  humanity. 

Now,  at  last,  the  eyes  of  the  Philistines  were 
opened  at  their  former  loyal  vassal,  and  they  en- 
deavored to  choke,  at  its  very  birth,  the  rising  power  of 
David — but  in  vain.  The  task  upon  which  Saul  had 
been  wrecked,  was  accomplished  by  David,  and  indeed 
definitively.  David  for  all  coming  ages  made  the 
return  of  the  Philistines  an  impossibility,  yet,  on  the 
other  hand,  he  did  not  molest  them  in  their  own 
country ;  did  not  rob  them  of  a  single  inch  of  land  or 
take  a  single  stone  from  their  fortresses. 

David  figures  as  the  greatest  warrior  of  ancient 
Israel.  Victory  ever  remained  faithful  to  him ;  he 
humbled  all  the  neighbor-nations  or  conquered  them — 
but  we  must  particularly  lay  stress  upon  the  fact,  that 
David  waged  all  his  brilliant  wars  only  in  order  to 
repel  unprovoked  attacks,  and  in  defense  of  the  most 
vital  interests  of  his  people.  It  cannot  be  proved,  or 
even  made  to  seem  probable,  that  any  of  his  wars  had 
been  begun  by  himself  personally.  David  was  no 
greedy  robber,  no  vulgar  swash-buckler. 

Yet  even  all  these  heroical  deeds  are  not  the  grandest 
trait  of  his  character ;  what  he  achieved  in  the  inner 
moral  sphere  is  of  infinitely  greater  importance.  Above 
all  his  heart  beat  high  in  unison  with  the  national  soul 
of  Israel.  As  a  true  Israelite  he  was  a  faithful  servant 
and  worshiper  of  Jahve,  for  whose  sole  glory  and  with 
whose  trusting  aid  he  wielded  the  sword.  He  wisely 
understood  that  a  king  of  Israel  must  not  only  be  a 
brave  warrior,  but  that  in  the  Israelitic  state  there  also 
must  be  a  place  for  Jahve.  In  conformity  with  this 
view  David  wished  within  the  political  centre  of  his 
kingdom  to  create  also  an  ideal,  religious  centre. 


13*     EPITOMES  OF   THREE  SCIENCES. 

While  Saul  characteristically  had  allowed  the  Ark  of 
the  Covenant,  the  people's  old-time  halidom,  to  perish 
from  oblivious  neglect,  David's  earliest  concern  was 
to  fetch  it  back  from  the  little  village,  where  it  re- 
mained forgotten,  and  bring  it  into  the  new  political 
capital,  where  it  would  occupy  a  more  worthy  station; 
just  as  Gideon  once  had  inaugurated  his  tribal  dynasty 
by  the  erection  of  a  sanctuary  in  his  native  city  of 
Ophra.  David  himself  never  undertook  any  important 
action  without  first  consulting  Jahve  through  the 
priest. 

The  portrait  of  David  is  not  wanting  in  human 
traits  of  the  worser  sort,  and  the  books  of  Samuel 
with  inexorable  love  of  truth  have  not  in  the  least 
wished  to  hide  or  mince  the  matter.  Still,  the  fact 
remains  that  David  stands  forth  as  the  most  luminous 
figure  and  most  gifted  personality  in  the  whole  history 
of  Israel,  in  greatness  surpassed  only  by  the  prophet  of 
Sinai,  by  Moses,  "the  man  of  God." 

What  David  achieved  for  Israel  cannot  be  rated 
too  high.  Israel  as  a  people,  as  a  political  factor,  as 
a  concrete  power  in  the  world's  history,  as  a  nation 
in  the  highest  sense,  is  exclusively  the  work  of  David  ; 
and,  although  the  kingdom  which  he  built  up  through 
the  struggles  and  anxieties  of  a  long  and  active  life, 
soon  collapsed  ;  although  Israel  itself,  even  a  few  gener- 
ations after  his  death,  was  again  divided  into  two 
halves — still,  the  ideal  unity  long  survived  the  divis- 
ion that  had  really  taken  place.  The  past  grandeur 
of  the  Davidian  Epoch  still  became  the  haunting  dream 
of  the  future  days  of  Israel  ;  and  it  is  not  through  a 
mere  chance  that  the  wistful  longing,  and  even  the 
consolation  of  Israel,  should  reappear  in  the  form  of 
a  returning  ideal  David,  who,  in  his  own  person, 


RISE   OF  THE   PKOri.E   ()/•    /SKA EL.      i.?.j 

should  combine  all  the  virtues  and  excellencies  of  the 
historical  David,  without  any  of  his  foibles. 

With  David  the  people  of  Israel  had,  once  fur  all 
time,  reached  the  acme  of  its  national  existence;  his 
like  never  appeared  again.  After  David,  the  history 
of  the  people  of  Israel  changes  into  a  continuous  trag- 
edy, pointedly  illustrating  the  words  of  the  Apostle 
Paul,  that  the  misfortune  of  Israel  enriched  the  world. 
The  pearl  is  a  disease  of  the  shell,  and  kills  that  which 
creates  it.  And  thus,  also,  the  costly  legacy  be- 
queathed by  Israel  to  the  world,  gushed  forth  from  a 
well  of  tears.  The  worldly  grandeur  of  Israel  col- 
lapsed stone  by  stone,  inch  by  inch,  into  utter  decay; 
but  the  smaller  it  might  appear  outwardly  the  greater 
it  became  inwardly.  In  the  downfall  of  Israel  Jahve 
triumphed;  and  on  the  ruins  of  Jerusalem,  Jeremiah 
proclaimed  the  New  Covenant. 

Israel  died  as  a  political  nation,  but  arose  again  as 
a  religious  sect,  as  a  community  of  the  pious,  the  God- 
fearing, who,  alone,  would  be  privileged,  and  able, 
from  out  of  their  midst,  to  send  forth  another  son  of 
David,  according  to  the  flesh,  and,  spiritually,  the  per- 
former of  the  work  of  Moses;  greater  than  David, 
greater  even  than  Moses. 


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Treating  of  the  following  topics  : 

1.  SPONTANEOUS,  OR  NATURAL,  ATTENTION. 

a.  Emotional  States. 

b.  Physical  Manifestations. 

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b.  Inhibition. 

c .  The  Feeling  of  Effort. 

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